When Korey Dropkin, who grew up competing in bonspiels—curling tournaments—outside Boston but now lives in the curling hotbed of Duluth, Minn., failed to make the Beijing Olympics in 2022, he knew he needed a shake-up. Dropkin wanted to find a new mixed doubles partner and set his sights on Cory Thiesse, a friend and former college classmate at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Thiesse’s mom had been nudging him to join forces with her daughter for years. Now was the time to take his swing. “It’s always been my belief,” says Dropkin, 30, “that she is the best shotmaker in the United States.”
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So in April 2022, Dropkin asked Thiesse to meet him for a drink at the Pickwick, a Duluth curler-owned pub on the shores of Lake Superior. While Dropkin and Thiesse were friends, an invite for a one-on-one meetup felt unusual. “I thought it was a little weird,” says Thiesse. “I wonder where this is going?” Dropkin ordered an old-fashioned. Thiesse got a Moscow mule. After some small talk, Dropkin cut to the chase.
Would Thiesse be his partner for this Olympic cycle?
“It was an immediate yes,” says Thiesse, 31.
Thiesse was also ready for a switch. She and John Shuster, the five-time Olympian who led the U.S. to a gold-medal run in PyeongChang, had failed to qualify for the Beijing Games in mixed doubles. They’d been playing together for about three seasons. “I was trying to steal her away from the legend of American curling,” says Dropkin, who will be making his Olympic debut. Thiesse, who was an alternate for the 2018 women’s team in PyeongChang that finished eighth, called Shuster the next day. He understood and supported her decision, adding, says Thiesse, “but I’m going to find a partner, and I’m going to beat you.”
Team Korey/Cory—let’s merge the spellings and call them Team Corey—won the 2025 U.S. mixed doubles team trials and placed fifth in the World Mixed Doubles Curling Championships, earning them a spot at the Milano Cortina Olympics. (Shuster did not make it to his sixth Games; a team skipped by Danny Casper will represent the U.S. in the men’s tournament.) Dropkin and Thiesse, in fact, will be the first Team USA Olympians in action in Italy. Team Corey faces Norway in a round-robin contest on Feb. 5, the day before the opening ceremonies, at 10:05 a.m. local time in Cortina d’Ampezzo.
They attribute their success to complementary strengths. “Korey brings the energy to our team,” says Thiesse during a late-October joint interview with Dropkin from Edmonton, Canada, where they would go on to win the Saville Mixed Doubles Classic. “He is Mr. Fist Bump. He’s full of energy. And that’s really great for me. Because that is something that I’ve always sort of lacked out on the ice. I’m more the calm and collected one. So I think at times I sort of bring him back down.”
“Which is good,” Dropkin interjects. “Which is good.”
Thiesse, however, can bring the noise when necessary. A general rule: the louder Thiesse shouts on the ice, the harder Dropkin sweeps, to smooth the surface, remove friction, and allow a stone to go farther and straighter.
While on the road, they often stay in the same Airbnb. Dropkin, a realtor when he’s not throwing rocks for the U.S., does most of the cooking, whereas Thiesse, who works in a mercury-testing lab, handles the bulk of the cleaning. Dropkin’s habit of leaving dirty dishes in the sink drives Thiesse nuts, though he’s getting better about that. They carved pumpkins together on Halloween night.
They are both in serious relationships, with other people. Thiesse is married, and Dropkin is engaged. Married teams aren’t uncommon on the mixed curling circuit. “We love to see them get aggravated when they’re playing against us,” says Dropkin. (Briar Schwaller-Huerlimann and Yannick Schwaller of Switzerland, Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant of Canada, and Kristin Skaslien and Magnus Nedregotten of Norway are married teams competing in Cortina.)
Team Corey expects a healthy entourage of supporters, from Duluth and beyond, at these Games. “We try not to get too caught up in the reality of the situation, that this is the Olympics, that there’s so much more pressure on the line,” says Dropkin. “Like our coach always says, it’s just another bonspiel.”