Preston teen to face World Curling Championships despite 'virtually impossible' industry

An England curling champion from Preston has said there aren’t enough opportunities for people to get into curling – or to succeed in the sport at all.

Marianna Ward, 18, has been curling for the past five years, and during that time has ascended from a hobbyist to a repeat national champion.

Having started in 2021 as the only girl at the Barton Grange Flower Bowl, Marianna now says she is “really pleased” to have come in first at the ECA Junior Mixed Doubles Championships on 30 August, and is now looking ahead to the world championships in the coming months.

“It was quite difficult to balance it all with studying,” she told the Lancashire Evening Post. “I had three national championships in the run up to my A-Levels, and it was quite similar with my GCSEs.

“In terms of behind the scenes, I spend a lot of time on the ice training, just throwing the shots again and again and again and trying to be as accurate as I can. I do a lot of weight training. And then because I’m captain of my team as well, I spend a lot of time watching different games looking at strategy.

“My friend and his mum decided to take me along [to the Flower Bowl] one summer, and we decided to give curling a go. We really enjoyed it. We both went back the next week, and then we just kept going.”

Preston Curling Club has existed for more than 150 years, and was, Marianna says, once more popular than Preston North End.

For over a century the team played on frozen lakes before eventually taking over an ice rink in Lockerbie in the seventies.

In 2018, the team finally made their permanent home in Barton Grange’s Flower Bowl ice rink.

Having just completed her A-Levels, Marianna is now taking a gap year to focus on curling full-time, which includes coaching the next generations of Preston’s curlers.

But despite having competed herself multiple times, she now warns that curlers in England face continuous barriers to getting involved in the sport, with the Flower Bowl being only one of two dedicated curling rinks in the entire country.

“We have currently got two curling rinks in England compared to a whopping 21 in Scotland,” Marianna says. “You’ve got the one here, and one in Tunbridge Wells in Kent, which only opened in 2025.

“I remember looking at the numbers, and in Scotland, they have something like 10,000 members actively playing curling across different categories, including wheelchair curling, mixed doubles, men’s and women’s, mixed, and senior teams. It’s a much bigger thing in Scotland than in England.

“After the Olympics, we were getting so many people involved. I run the junior club, and we were up from about five or ten juniors all the way up to 20-plus.

“I do the social media for the English Curling Association, and I put a post up about the rinks in England, and I got a massive amount of likes and views and people commenting on it asking when there was going to be more rinks in the South or North East. There’s definitely interest, just not the facilities to accommodate it.”

However, even for those who do live in Preston or Kent, access to facilities does not translate to access to a full career.

As it stands, only people born in Scotland – or who have lived there for more than two years – are eligible to join the British Curling Academy.

British Curling is the organisation behind Team GB’s Olympic curling team.

According to Marianna, such restrictions only widen the access gap for curlers in England.

“I’ve had comments from people saying that nobody’s any good at curling in England,” Marianna says.

“I played against a [Scottish] team where somebody said they nearly got beaten by a ‘club curling team’, which was quite offensive. But we haven’t had access to the same level of coaching as those guys would have had, simply because we can’t get it without having to pay massive amounts of money.

“I’m sure a lot of the Scottish girls would agree that it’s a shame, because there are people that I know who are at a similar level to where a lot of the Scottish junior curlers are who still aren’t necessarily getting the same amount of funding. They can’t get in the academy because you have to be Scottish, and it’s so disappointing.

“It’s virtually impossible to for anyone in England to get into British Curling at the moment.”

Despite the difficulties in pursuing curling in England, Marianna says she’s still committed to pursuing her dream.

In December she’ll travel to World Junior-B Championships in Finland before later heading to Canada in May.

On top of working full-time at the rink, she is now fundraising to support her journey, with the money raised set to go towards travel and kit costs.

“Curling is such a niche sport that a lot of the time, people don’t want to sponsor it. I’ve sent about 30-odd emails out from our team to get sponsors, and had absolutely nothing. I’ve looked for grants and funding, and there’s almost nothing – curling often isn’t an option.

“World Curling might partially cover our flights and give a small amount for kit, but the rest really adds up.

“[Where the fundraising money goes] depends on how successful it will be. It will go towards things like kit, travel, and accommodation for these different events. It will also go towards things like travel insurance and insurance on my equipment, and depending on how much money I’ll be hopefully giving it to other teammates to help them a little bit.

“I’m taking it really seriously this year. I’m hoping to place well in both competitions,” Marianna says.

“When this year is done, I’ll probably end up heading off to uni or getting some sort of other job, but I’m still going to be curling. If I’m not curling, then there’s something seriously wrong with me.”

Marianna Ward’s GoFundMe is available here.

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