A/Prof Anne Powell and the sport of curling

A/Prof Anne Powell and a team mate mid game

Associate Professor Anne Powell is the new Director of CCS's Medical Education program.  She is a rheumatologist and general physician, and also Director of Physician Education at Alfred Health. She did her undergraduate training at Monash University so she has a lifetime experience of Monash's medical education system.

One of Anne's passions in life is a winter sport called curling.
She says, "I first learnt how to curl when at the University of Alberta in Canada doing my Research Clinical Fellowship in rheumatology in 2006.  I then started to play socially in 2009 when a curling league started at the then Icehouse in Melbourne (now known as the O'Brien Arena).  In 2013, I played for the Australian Women's team in the Asia Pacifics in Shanghai.  In 2015 my team qualified to compete in Berne, Switzerland at the first World Mixed Curling Championship.  We won 2 of our 8 games (beating Israel and Spain and losing all our other games!!!).  Very happy with our effort given lack of dedicated curling ice in Australia and our team coming from different parts of Australia with training in Prague for 4 days prior to the competition.

"Curling has been described as lawn bowls on ice, but the sweeping can make the rock go further and straighter, so there is a lot of strategy involved.  Each player throws 2 rocks each end (total of 8 rocks each team) and there are usually 8 ends every game.  Curling is a winter Olympic sport for men's and women's fours with the new addition of mixed doubles at the next Olympics.  There is social curling in winter in Melbourne at the Icehouse on Monday nights with regular come-and-try sessions."