Local curling great Marcel Rocque is renowned in St. Paul for his four Brier Cup championships and three World Championship victories, but if there’s one thing missing from his resume, it’s the Olympic Games.
At February’s 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, Rocque will finally cross an appearance at the Olympics off his list of achievements, and while he’ll be wearing red, there will be some yellow in there too as he will stand as head coach for the Chinese national curling team.
“The contract has to do with working with the national team coaches in place, probably training them. I’ll also be working in some other capacities that I’ve done here with the Canadian Curling Association as well, so that’s where that came in,” Rocque told the Journal. “I’ll also be head coach of the men’s and women’s national teams, and they’ve also suggested that I would work with their junior national teams as well. So it’s encompassing a fairly large portfolio of things that need to be done but I’ve got experience in all of it so I should be okay.”
While Rocque was at the World Championships in Victoria in late March, Chinese coaches approached him following a radio interview, and asked what Rocque’s plans were for the upcoming season.
“I said that I was just going to be teaching and I had no intention of changing that, but they asked if we could meet and we had another meeting the following day. From there I agreed to meet with them in Edmonton and started digging around to see whether or not it was even a possibility for me to get time off from teaching,” he said. “Once I figured out that was even a possibility we started negotiating back and forth over email, and a few weekends ago I flew down to Beijing for the weekend and worked on trying to finalize the contract and everything looks good so far.”
Rocque added that there were a number of factors that weighed in on his decision to take the position with the Chinese Curling Association, primarily the opportunity to take part in the Olympic Games. While the men’s team has already qualified for the Sochi Olympics, it will be part of Rocque’s assignment to help the women’s team achieve a berth at a qualifier in Germany later this year.
“It’s really one of the only things that I haven’t accomplished in my own career, so that is definitely something that made it more appealing. And then the challenge of seeing how much I might be able to influence and help them is another motivation for me,” he said, adding he hopes to return to coach and play in Canada when his contract the Chinese team expires after the Olympics. “I have the experience of being a competitor, I have the teaching background, and then I have quite a bit of experience training teams. So this gives me an opportunity to continue to add to that resume which hopefully one day possibly leads me to being involved and giving back to the sport for a long, long time in Canada.”
Rocque was scheduled to fly out to China on Saturday, where he will join up with the Chinese curling coaching staff, and the French as a second language, physical education and culinary teacher says that while he expects the language barrier to be an obstacle, it doesn’t worry him too much.
“It’s definitely something that I need to focus on, but I’ve got a translator. The national team coach for the women’s team is fairly strong in English, and after spending that weekend in Beijing with the teams and the coaches, it seems like we can figure out a way to make sure that everyone understands what’s being said.”
Rocque added the Chinese Curling Association has been very inviting to him, and through competing against Chinese teams in the past he knows they have what it takes to succeed.
“I know they work hard. We competed against them when we were competing ourselves. I know from the experience that I’ve had that they’re very kind, they work hard, and in terms of the language and that, I’m a second language minor teacher so I’ve got some strategies to help me understand them. Thus far their culture seems very friendly, open and inviting,” he said.
