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Roxane Héritier, former Curler, at Zurich

ROXANE HÉRITIER, FORMER CURLER
Curling and the «life after sport»
04 / 2023
Roxane Héritier has spent more than half her life burning for curling – of course she still does, but no longer actively on the ice. She has decided to take on new challenges and goals and to acquire and develop other skills. Her focus is no longer on curling, but on training and further education and other new sports. The budding psychologist has just completed an internship as a working student in Human Resources at Zurich Insurance, so we naturally wanted to know how she got on, how her journey continues and what she takes with her from her many years of curling into «life after sport».
At Zurich Insurance, I immersed myself in a new world that was unknown to me. Up to now, I have worked almost exclusively in the sports industry. At Zurich Insurance, I was able to get to know new personalities and gain experience from people in a completely new field for me.
A big challenge was to find out what was required of me in an area that I was not yet familiar with. Where can I go and what do I have to do to get there? In sport, I usually knew what I had to do, so I appreciated all the more that everything was so well organized at Zurich Insurance. The well-structured processes and close cooperation with my superiors made it much easier for me to get started.
My primary areas of responsibility were the administration of various HR processes. However, I would like to emphasize my role as HR ambassador. Each HR department – mine was Administration – had its own contact person who was allowed to conduct employee surveys and represent the concerns of employees.
I’m currently at a stage in my life where I want to try out as many different things as possible to find out what suits me and where I want to go.
A big challenge was to find out what was required of me in an area that I was not yet familiar with. Where can I go and what do I have to do to get there? In sport, I usually knew what I had to do, so I appreciated all the more that everything was so well organized at Zurich Insurance. The well-structured processes and close cooperation with my superiors made it much easier for me to get started.
My primary areas of responsibility were the administration of various HR processes. However, I would like to emphasize my role as HR ambassador. Each HR department – mine was Administration – had its own contact person who was allowed to conduct employee surveys and represent the concerns of employees.
It wasn’t just Roxane who enjoyed it, her boss Olivia Blattner was also impressed by her approach: «Roxane immediately applied for this additional position as an HR ambassador, which is not a matter of course. I was very impressed by her unbiased manner, her great interest in the subject matter and the way she approached people without any fear of contact. She confronted her superiors with questions with ease and didn’t shy away from answering them.»
I think I consciously or unconsciously picked this up from my time as an athlete. There, too, I always tried to think in terms of solutions and to always find them. From curling, I’m also used to dealing with change and working towards goals. Even if there are always phases when things don’t go quite smoothly, you shouldn’t bury your head in the sand straight away.
At Zurich Insurance, there were always changes and processes that had to be adapted. Here, too, it was crucial for me to accept the new things and react to them in a considered way.
I’ve always been fascinated by psychology. In curling, we had a lot to do with mental coaches and sports psychologists. It’s particularly important to keep your pulse steady and focus directly on the next stone. In curling, you have to have your nerves under control at all times because your feeling when throwing the stone is crucial.
I was able to directly incorporate and apply some of my knowledge from my studies. How do I give feedback, who do I give feedback to and how do I receive it? Communication in a team plays a crucial role; not only in sport, but also at work.
I can very well imagine working in sports psychology myself one day, as my heart burns for sport. I am at home in the sport of curling and have lived through all the experiences myself, so I could probably pass on my knowledge most profitably. However, I am interested in many sports and find the diversity aspect very exciting. Every sport and every athlete has different needs and brings different requirements with them. That always presents me with a new challenge.
I’ve also discovered that coaching is something I really enjoy. I had the honour of coaching the national women’s U curling team for two years, which I really enjoyed. But even then I learnt that you can’t do this job with half your energy. The team was very ambitious and I had to devote almost as much time to it as I did when I was still active myself. That’s when I decided to put this position on hold again – I might be able to take it up again at a later date when I’ve finished my studies.
My professional career was also the reason why I decided to stop curling in 2020. My team was in the top 15 in the world. But we would have had to invest a lot more to move up another place. To put it metaphorically; we wouldn’t have had to shoot stones for 1.5 hours a day, but up to 5 hours a day. This was simply to maintain the consistency demanded by the world’s best. I was faced with the decision “all or nothing”. I decided against the sport.
But I couldn’t stop completely. I’m playing in a club again and have recently started to enjoy it again. At first, I had a lot of trouble coming to terms with the fact that I was getting worse. I was increasingly frustrated and couldn’t enjoy it. But now I’ve learnt to deal with it and I can simply enjoy the game. From next season, I’ll even be playing in a permanent team again, where we’ll be travelling semi-ambitiously in Switzerland and Europe, but no longer chasing points.
On the one hand, I like this very much, but on the other hand I still miss curling at a high level. It’s primarily the competition that I miss. The competition. But what do I love? Having time to try out new things – squash, skiing, meeting friends. I can be enthusiastic about a lot of things, but I still want to find that fire again, something that I’m passionate about and that makes me tingle again. Again, I have two hearts in my chest: on the one hand, I find this a very exhausting and annoying process, on the other hand, it’s very cool and exciting.
My work at Zurich Insurance is an important building block in taking another small step in my post-sports career. After working for the Swiss Confederation in the army’s top-class sports promotion programme, this time I was given an insight into a world-class company. Unfortunately, these activities differed too much from the topics I deal with in my psychology degree programme. In the end, this prompted me to move on. I am currently completing an internship in school and counselling psychology. From August 2023, I am looking for a permanent position with a 40-50% workload that complements my Master’s degree programme well.