The game-winning shot, he said, was “easy and open.”
The impact was huge.
Danny Casper, who grew up in Briarcliff but found a second home at the Ardsley Curling Club, is now one tournament away from earning a trip with his curling team to the 2026 Olympics.
In what some characterized as an upset, but which the 24-year-old saw as more a reflection of his team’s steady progress, Team Casper (team captain Casper, Luc Violette, Ben Richardson, Aidan Oldenburg and alternate Rich Ruohonen) captured the three-day, best-of-three U.S. Olympic Trials with a 7-5 third-game win over Team Shuster on Nov. 16.
Why Team Casper beating Team Shuster in curling is a big deal
Team Shuster is renowned in curling circles. Its captain is John Shuster, a 2018 Olympic gold medalist, who was attempting to qualify for his sixth straight Olympic Games.
Team Casper had entered Sunday’s rubber match at the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota having beaten Shuster’s squad 7-6 Friday before losing by that same score Saturday.
Because the U.S.’s combined placements between the last two world championships weren’t high enough to give it an automatic berth in the 2026 Olympic Games in Cortina D’Ampezzo, Italy, Team Casper will now have to finish in the top two in an eight-country field at the Dec. 5-11 Olympic Qualifying Event in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada.
The road back to the curling sheet for Danny Casper
But just getting to this point might have been viewed as a long shot for Casper, who was out of curling for about seven months after being stricken with Guillain-Barré Syndrome in March 2024. The autoimmune disorder, which causes, among other things, muscle weakness, numbness/tingling and pain, hit him particularly hard in the summer of 2024. Even pushing and willing himself back into curling, Casper was only able to play half the games at the 2025 U.S. national championships, held at the end of January and beginning of February. (His team fell in the final to Team Dropkin, whose players include another Ardsley Curling Club alum, Andrew Stopera.)
Casper, who noted multiple players have been recruited to fill in for him, said, at that point, his participation in the Trials was “100%” in doubt.
But by this past August, he turned a corner, pushing through the lingering soreness that continues to dog him, to compete fully with his team in a competition in Italy.
“Over the summer, I was making progress. … I thought there was a chance (to play in the Trials). … In Italy in August, I was like, ‘I can do this.’ Probably up until then, it was, ‘Who knows?’ ” Casper said.
In playing against Team Shuster, Casper, who figures he’s 75-80% back to where he was physically before his illness, was going against a known entity. Not only had his team played Shuster’s multiple times over the past few years, with Shuster holding only a slight edge over the past two, but Casper had also recently served as an alternate on Shuster’s team at one event.
How you prepare to face the best in international curling
Curling is not like the NFL with extensive, must-be-guarded-at-all-costs playbooks.
While perhaps profiting a bit by seeing how a world top team prepares for games, Casper didn’t gain inside knowledge about how to beat that team.
“Curling is curling,” he said, noting, “Everyone is out there, yelling (instructions).”
While not viewing his squad’s win over a guy whose success helped fuel his own desire to pursue the sport as anything bordering shocking, Casper said when the Trials began, he and his team, “understood we had a tall task in front of us.”
But Casper approached the pressure-packed third day with his normal calm, looking at being there as a “cool opportunity.”
“I think we have so much fun on our team. At the end of the day, it’s an honor to be playing the game,” Casper said.
While his team, which is in its second year together, is close, players are far from carbon copies of one another. Casper thinks that has added to its strength.
“It’s an interesting dynamic. … The four of us (starters) are all super different. I think the best thing for us is we all think about the game differently and even (other things differently) off the ice. We find that a good balance. We’ve found a way to capitalize on that,” said Casper, a Hackley School and University of Minnesota graduate, who went to college in Minnesota to immerse himself in a curling-rich environment and continues to live and train there.
Casper, the youngest member of a very young team (all are in their 20s, except the 54-year-old alternate Ruohonen), said he brings an emphasis on fun and a “calm confidence” to his team.
“I don’t get too worked up,” he said. “There are people who are more analytical and more emotional. I think I can make the shot every time I throw (the stone).”
Of being on the cusp of going to the Olympics, He said, “It’s always been the goal — what you think about, you’re dreaming about.”
He added it was only in the past year or two that making the 2026 team seemed like a possibility.
“I think a lot of people picked Shuster to win one more time and us the next one,” Casper said.
Now the job at hand is to win or be runner-up at the last-chance qualifier.
Casper thinks the competition will be tough, pointing to China, Japan, the Netherlands and the Philippines (with two members originally from Switzerland) as teams capable of qualifying.
So, he’s not taking anything for granted.
Describing his feeling in the aftermath of winning the Olympic Trials as tempered joy, Casper said his team will have fun but will practice hard in the lead-up to the Olympic qualifier.
“We still have a lot of work to do,” he said.
Nancy Haggerty covers sports for The Journal News/lohud.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Ardsley Curling Club star Danny Casper one more step from Olympics with Trials win
Reporting by Nancy Haggerty, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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