US curling coach Wally Henry looks forward to coaching daughter at Olympics

Henry will coach daughter in Olympics

GREEN BAY, Wis. — Wally Henry watches intently through the glass window as his daughter leads her U.S. Olympic teammates through a curling practice, a session he helped structure.

He studies Debbie McCormick’s strategy and the delivery and release of each athlete.

McCormick is busy preparing for her third and perhaps final Olympic run after missing the 2006 Turin Games, and her father and coach will be right there beside the U.S. captain in Vancouver next month offering plenty of input and love.

Yet you’d never know by watching these two at work that they’re family.

Once McCormick and Henry step on the ice, there are no father-daughter bonding moments and no special treatment on either side. They have one thing in mind: bringing home an Olympic medal from their native Canada.

McCormick is focused on her job as skip for the Americans, while Henry makes sure to keep this close-knit group of women on task. It’s so easy for them to get wrapped up in chats about their families and kids, or discussing the details of Nicole Joraanstad’s upcoming wedding.

“You ladies ready to get out and throw some stones?” Henry asked good-naturedly before a December workout at Green Bay Curling Club. “I’ve got a session scheduled.”

Eventually, the women wrapped up their conversations, put down their mugs of tea and emerged from the kitchen to get to work.

Henry had bribed them with lunch afterward if they used their ice time efficiently.

McCormick’s teammates are amazed at her ability to separate her personal relationship with her coach and father when it’s time to curl.

“He’s been my coach forever. It’s a very natural feeling and calming to have him there,” said McCormick, who turned 36 last week. “When he’s coach, he’s coach. I really don’t call him dad on the ice. I just say ‘coach Wally.’ He’s hard on me, just like he is with the other girls. Hopefully at the Olympics we’ll have time off to have father-daughter time.”

Someday, these two know they will look back on this experience as something to cherish for the rest of their lives. Right now, they’re too wrapped up in last-minute Olympic preparations to become too sentimental about it all.

“That’s something else impressive about them, they’re professionals,” vice skip Allison Pottinger said. “It’d be hard. Both of them do a very good job of it. That really is a pretty special experience. Yes, they have the coach-athlete experience but they also have the father-daughter experience. It will make them closer in ways they can’t even imagine.”

Henry knows some of his Canadian pals will be torn about who to cheer for in the Olympic competition — at least when Henry’s U.S team is facing his native country, that is.

Curling at these Olympics is being hyped up in popularity right along with Canadian pastime hockey and figure skating.

McCormick and her father would like nothing more than to shine in their homeland. McCormick just missed a trip to the last Olympics. It came down to an extra end.

“It still stings,” she said. “We came so close.”

Henry was an assistant coach for his daughter’s fourth-place team at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where the Americans lost in the bronze-medal game. McCormick was on the fifth-place U.S. team at Nagano in 1998.

McCormick was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, moving to Wisconsin as a toddler when her father transferred for work. Henry, a two-time U.S. curling champion, retired in January 2008 as admissions director at Herzing College after a 35-year career.

It was while watching her father compete that McCormick caught the curling bug.

“It’s special. We’re going to be in a country we originally came from,” Henry said. “There will a lot of people rooting for us as long as we’re not curling the Canadian team. We also have relatives throughout Canada.”

Last year, Henry coached both McCormick and his son, Donnie, to national curling championships, Donnie at the club level.

McCormick and Henry know very well this could be their last hurrah on the Olympic stage. McCormick and her teammates have spent the last four years dedicating themselves to these Games and aren’t planning to defend their national title once the Olympics are over — knowing they will be ready for a much-needed physical and mental break.

They’ve handed off the U.S. title trophy after winning it the last four years.

McCormick insists there’s a “fire” inside that has kept her on the ice this long. She took a leave of absence from her job at Home Depot to put all her energy into the Olympics.

Pottinger, too, was part of the team that just missed out on the Olympics in ‘06.

“That disappointment really did fuel her to do better at the next Trials,” Henry said of McCormick. “It took a long time to get over. The next four years they won four national championships in a row.”

McCormick hopes to start a family soon after the Olympics end and hasn’t ruled out calling it a career, or at the very least taking an extended break from the sport.

Whatever’s next, McCormick’s father will be there to support her. McCormick, her brother, and their parents all live within 45 minutes of each other in Wisconsin.

“The nice thing about our team is we’ve always taken it year to year. In the past we’ve had four-year commitments, but we always said family comes first,” McCormick said. “The great thing about curling is you can always take a year or two off and come back. I don’t feel any pressure. It’s not a decision I have to make right now.”

Without thinking too far into the future, Henry is making sure his team is as prepared as possible to be at its best come the opening Olympic match.

He has been working with Team McCormick in recent months on shot making and strategy. The Americans expect to get their biggest tests from Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, China and Denmark in a tournament that doesn’t boast an odds-on favorite.

“Now the goal is the podium,” Henry said. “I feel strongly that we should be on the podium. There’s a lot of fight in each of the girls on this team.”