Yang Tae-i
Yang Tae-i (born December 6, 1999) is a South Korean curler from Uijeongbu. She is currently the alternate for Team Kim Min-ji. She is a 2018 Pacific-Asia Curling champion. Career. Yang played second for the South Korean junior team at the 2016 World Junior Curling Championships, skipped by Kim Min-ji, where she would win the bronze medal. After finishing the round robin with a 7–2 record, the team lost to Hungary (skipped by Dorottya Palancsa) in the 3 vs. 4 page playoff game, but went on to beat the Hungarians in a re -match in the bronze medal game, after Hungary lost in the semifinal. The next season, the team began playing on the World Curling Tour. They won her first tour event by claiming the 2016 Hub International Crown of Curling. The team represented Korea at the 2017 World Junior Curling Championships, where they posted a 5–4 round robin record, tied with Switzerland for fourth. They would beat the Swiss in a tiebreaker, before losing two straight games against Canada to finish in fourth place. This team represented Korea at the 2018 World Junior Curling Championships, where they finished with a 4–5  record, missing the playoffs. The team began the 2018–19 season by winning the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic. They then went on to win gold at the 2018 Pacific-Asia Curling Championships, earning South Korea a berth at the 2019 World Women's Curling Championship. She and her team participated in all four legs of the 2018–19 Curling World Cup. In the First Leg, they finished with a 1–5 record, placing seventh out of eight teams. At the Second Leg, they made it all the way to the final falling just short to Japan's Satsuki Fujisawa 7–6. The team improved  on this performance by winning the Third Leg against Sweden's Anna Hasselborg rink. In the Grand Final, the team finished with a 2–4 record. Her team, still junior eligible represented Korea at the 2019 World Junior Curling Championships. They finished the round robin with a 6–3 record, which was tied with three other teams for the second best record. However, they missed the playoffs due to tiebreaker rules. The following month, the team represented Korea at the 2019 Winter Universiade. This time their 6–3 record was enough to make the playoffs, where they made it all the way to  the final before losing to Sweden. Later that month, the team had yet another international event to play in, the 2019 World Championship. The team was even better on this stage, finishing the round robin with a 9–3 record, in second place. In the playoffs, they lost to Switzerland's Silvana Tirinzoni rink in the semifinal, but rebounded to win the bronze medal game against Seina Nakajima of Japan. It was the first ever medal won by Korea at the Women's World Championship. The team ended their season with a 1–3 record at the 2019 Champions Cup Grand Slam  of Curling event. Team Kim lost the final of the 2019 Korean Women's Curling Championship the following season in June 2019 to the Gim Un-chi rink after Kim missed her last shot and gave up a steal of two in the tenth end. This meant they would not be the national women's team for the season. The team won the Tour Challenge Tier 2 event after a strong 9–2 win over Jestyn Murphy. This qualified them for the Canadian Open in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. There, they defeated higher ranked teams such as three time Scotties champion Rachel Homan , 2013 world champion Eve Muirhead and 2020 Scotties champion Kerri Einarson. They made it all the way to the final before losing to the Anna Hasselborg rink in an extra end. They also made it all the way to the final of the 2020 World Junior Curling Championships, where they lost to Canada's Mackenzie Zacharias. On the World Curling Tour, they won the Boundary Ford Curling Classic, finished fourth at the inaugural WCT Uiseong International Curling Cup, made the quarterfinals at the Red Deer Curling Classic and missed the playoffs at the 2019 Curlers Corner Autumn Gold Curling Classic  and the 2019 Canad Inns Women's Classic. The Kim rink began the abbreviated 2020–21 season at the 2020 Korean National Women's Curling Championship. There, they qualified for the playoffs with a 5–1 record before losing both of their playoff games to the Kim Eun-jung and Gim Un-chi rinks, settling for third. Later that season, they competed in the only two Grand Slam events of the season, which were played in a "curling bubble" in Calgary, Alberta, with no spectators, to avoid the spread of the coronavirus. The team missed the playoffs at both the 2021 Champions  Cup and the 2021 Players' Championship.