The senior women’s curling foursome of Sherry Anderson, Patty Hersikorn, Brenda Goertzen, and Anita Silvernagle re-wrote the provincial, national and world championship record books over seven short years.
The Anderson rink won six consecutive Saskatchewan senior provincial titles, five national senior curling championships and three World Senior Curling Championships – each of which is a record.
The Saskatoon Nutana Curling Club foursome was formed in 2016. The season before, Silvernagle and Goertzen had played together on a women’s team with their daughters that reached the women’s provincial playdowns. While the four members of the rink knew each other, turning 50 years of age and becoming eligible for senior competition brought them together more than any previous experiences together.
Despite being a new team, they tasted early success. In their first senior provincial final, they were down by four points midway through their eight-end contest against a rink that featured Olympic champions Jan Betker, Joan McCusker and Marcia Gudereit. The Anderson rink rallied to win the senior provincial title title.
Anderson has represented Saskatchewan at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts 10 times, reaching the final in 2002. She also reached the final at the 2001 Olympic trials in Regina. Anderson and Silvernagle were on the same rink that won the Saskatchewan Intermediate Women’s Championship in 2006. Hersikorn had attended a Scotties as the alternate for Jill Shumay in 2013 and had been Anderson’s alternate at the Olympic pre-trials in 2009.
At their first trip to senior nationals, the Anderson rink lost to six-time Scotties winner Colleen Jones, but they would go on to win the five subsequent national titles. They won their first in 2017, beating Ontario’s Jo-Ann Rizzo 7-3 in the final. In 2018, they beat Nova Scotia’s Mary Mattatall 7-6. In 2019, they beat Sherry Middaugh’s Ontario rink by an 11-7 score. In 2021 they defeated Mary-Anne Arsenault 10-4 and in 2022 they beat Chantel Osborne 7-3 in the final. The provincial and national championships were both not held in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
At their first World Senior Women’s Curling Championship in Östersund, Sweden in 2018, they defeated Margie Smith’s United States team 5-4 to top the 15-team field in front of a large red-clad group of family and friends. They defended their title in 2019 by beating Denmark’s Lene Bidstrup Nyboe 10-1 to finish unbeaten at the 16-team event in Stavanger, Norway.
In 2022, they lost in the quarter-finals to the Americans but were back on top a year later. They won their third world senior title in 2023 beating Scotland’s Jackie Lockhart (herself the 2002 world champion) 8-4 in Gangneung, South Korea.
Anderson is from Christopher Lake and lives in Delisle. Hersikorn is originally from Hudson Bay, while Silvernagle grew up in Biggar and Goertzen is from Saskatoon.
Installed in the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame on September 28, 2024.
