The United States’ curling team shocked the globe by defeating the powerhouse Sweden 10-7 for the gold medal.

Their road to gold was extremely difficult. Just a week ago, the US curlers were on the brink of elimination. They were tasked with defeating the 3-time defending Olympic gold medalists, Canada twice, Switzerland, Great Britain, and top ranked Sweden.

The U.S. curlers were able to come out on top of the four challenging games and were left with Sweden. The U.S.A.’s team was made up of John Shuster, Tyler George, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner. There strategy going into the matchup was to prevent the Swedes from scoring and force them to make the big moves.

Executing on their strategy, the team secured the first gold medal the United States has ever won in curling.

Shuster, the teams skip, deserves a lot of the credit for the teams big win. The skip is the team’s captain who has to make the difficult strategy calls. However, every member was extremely involved in the team’s victory.

The Blanchet community was buzzing with excitement after the team’s big win.

“Just shows hard work pays off, and if you put your mind to anything you can do it,” said senior Jackson Stanfield.  

“It’s just fantastic. The fact that team USA came together and cultivated so much team spirit is truly inspirational,” said junior Deborah Gebreyesus.

“It’s very exciting to see a new program being successful in the Olympics,” said junior Sadie Kenny.

This is the second silver medal Sweden has won since curling returned to the Olympics in 1998. Switzerland took down Canada to secure the  bronze medal.