Notice: October 26 2010 - UCC hosts Olympic Women's Curling from China

Bingyu Wang (skip), Yin Liu, Qingshuang Yue, Yan Zhou

More photos of the day.

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Photo Credits: Simon Lau

The following article was published in the Markham Economist and Sun Newspaper

Sports
October 26, 2009 12:03 PM

BY MICHAEL HAYAKAWA

The Unionville Curling Club played the role of goodwill international ambassadors Wednesday.

For a couple of hours late that afternoon, the defending world champion Chinese Olympic women's curling team, skipped by Bingyu Wang, paid a visit to the Unionville Curling Club.

While there, they took to the pebbled ice surface to play a friendly against members from the host club.

Club manager Fred Berkhuizen noted the Chinese Olympic women's team appearance in Canada coincided with the Grey Power World Cup of Curling taking place at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga this weekend.

During that competition, the Women's Three Nations Cup will take place and include Wang's foursome.

As for how the Unionville Curling Club came to host the Chinese team, which is coming off its first-ever world championship, Berkhuizen said it stemmed from an announcement from the Toronto Curling Association requesting volunteers to serve as host for the Chinese and Scottish teams taking part in the Three Nations Cup.

Citing the huge Chinese population that exists in the Markham-Unionville area, Berkhuizen felt their club would be an ideal place to serve as hosts.

"One of our members, Peter Wong, is serving as the ambassador for the Chinese team," he said.

Reprinted with permission.