"You got it, Chels" the mantra for Team Canada at the World Women's Curling Championship

You heard it again and again, all through The Scotties.

The camera would focus on Alberta skip Chelsea Carey as she settled into the hack before each of her shots. A voice from off camera unfailingly and clearly said: "You got it, Chels. Trust it."

It was the voice of Alberta's second, Jocelyn Peterman, reminding the skip that she should have faith in the shot she'd just called and that the broom she was aiming at was set in the proper place, down at the other end.

If that repeated mantra got to you as you watched Alberta trek its way to a Scotties championship, be prepared. As the team dons Canadian uniforms at the World Women's Curling Championship, you'll hear it again (or some version of it) because it ain't going anywhere.

“It matters,” said Carey as she fielded questions during a conference call just prior to going to pick up her Team Canada jerseys and jacket. I'd just asked her if she even heard those words, each time they were spoken. She had. Turns out that Peterman's repeated insistence is part of Carey's pre-shot routine, something every curler has as they get ready to kick from the hack. Spinning the rock, lightly brushing your knee before you grab the handle, motioning your arm up and down in line with the broom. All the types of things we see shooters do before they slide out.

For Carey, Peterman's voice is one of those things.

“I actually feel sorry for Jocelyn because she’s gotten nothing but grief about that," said Carey. "And it’s me who asked her to say it so, really, I should be the one getting the grief about it.”

“It’s me, not her, who’s asked for it. And it works for us. It does help me."

As Carey, Peterman, lead Laine Peters and third Amy Nixon attempt to end Canada's long drought at the Worlds, there will be no changing of what works. For Carey, a shot by shot reminder has become as essential as good weight and a clean release, ever since a tournament earlier in the year when she failed to "trust it."

"It was a shot I missed earlier in the year where I just didn’t do that," she said. "I wasn’t in a good head space. I didn’t throw it to make it. I said ‘if you guys think of it, throw this at me before I throw. She’s (Peterman) really taken it and run with it and now it’s just part of my sort of normalizing routine.”

Speaking of normal, Carey and her team haven't done anything differently in the time between the Scotties win and the Worlds, which kick off this weekend in Swift Current, Saskatchewan. “We’re just trying to stay in touch with the things we were doing at The Scotties," said Carey. "Just stay sharp. I mean, it’s not that long a break.”

In Swift Current, Carey's crew will attempt to win Canada's first world women's title since 2008, when Jennifer Jones skipped her Manitoba foursome to gold.

“I definitely think that that’s the level of expectation,” said Carey, admitting that there is a demanding air of frustration hanging about due to the country's misses over the last seven seasons. Is there an extra added layer of pressure on her shoulders because of that?

“You can’t let there be," she says in response. "I’m sure there is as far as if you looked at people’s expectations from the outside but we can’t worry about that. There’s lots of other (Canadian) teams that have gone there and tried to win, same as we’re gonna do and unfortunately haven’t been able to do it in a while. Maybe it’s us (who wins), maybe it’s not. All we can do is go there and try to play our best and as cliché as that sounds that’s all that we can control.”

Ranked fifth in the world according to the World Curling Tour's year-to-date order of merit standings, Team Canada finds itself the highest-ranking rink in the field at the worlds, although there are squads with more experience in such competitions. Scotland (8th ranked, WCT year-to date) is skipped by Eve Muirhead, the 2013 world champion who won silver when this tournament was last held in Swift Current, in 2010. Binia Feltscher skips a Swiss team (ranked 22nd) that won gold in 2014. Team Sweden (21st) is skipped by Margaretha Sigfridsson (who throws lead rocks), a four-time silver medallist. Russia (8th), with Anna Sidorova at the helm, has won bronze two years in a row, though the team does have a new lead this season.

“Oh there’s a whole bunch of really good teams at this tournament," said Carey. “Certainly, we’d like to consider ourselves as in the playoff mix but I’m sure that if you look at world experience and past world champions in the field, then you’d probably not put us at the top if that was your criteria. But we feel like we’re in the mix.”

“There’s a whole bunch of teams in this field that we’re a little less familiar with... but it’s a deep field as it always is at the world women’s these days."

Those deep fields, over the last seven years, have kept Canadian skips like Rachel Homan, Jennifer Jones, Amber Holland and Heather Nedohin off the top step of the podium (Carey's teammate Laine Peters played for Nedohin at the 2012 worlds, while Amy Nixon served as an alternate on that team). Jones ands Homan were each denied twice. That serves as a reminder of just how competitive the rest of the curling world is now.

Carey's team just hopes to keep the momentum building, as they do not believe they've reached their full potential, what with the skip joining them at the beginning of the season.

“We don’t think we’re all the way there by any means but we’ve made a ton of progress in a short period of time,” Carey said.

“We feel if we can bring the kind of level of play that we had at The Scotties that we’ll kinda be around at the end of the week and we'll see where we stack up."

They'll stack up well, as long as the skip continues to "trust it."