Cory Thiesse ( Christensen; born December 1, 1994) is an American curler from Duluth, Minnesota. She is currently the defending U.S. champion skip, and represented her country at the 2022 World Women's Curling Championship. Christensen was one of the top junior women's curlers in the United States, playing in six national junior championships and winning four of them. She was the alternate on Nina Roth's 2018 United States Olympic team.
In 2019 Thiesse and mixed doubles partner John Shuster won the United States Mixed Doubles Championship and earned the bronze medal at the World Mixed Doubles Championship.
Career
2010–2013: Early juniors
Thiesse's first appearance on the national stage was at the 2011 United States Junior National Championships, where she finished fifth. Out of her six Junior National appearances, that would be the only time she did not play in the championship final. At the 2012 Junior Championships Thiesse returned with the same team of third Elizabeth Busche, second Anna Bauman and lead Sonja Bauman. Thiesse skipped her team to victory, earning her first national title and her first opportunity to represent the United States at the World Junior Championships. At the 2012 World Juniors in Ostersund, Sweden, Thiesse's team finished with a winless 0–9 record. Tragedy struck just weeks after competing at the World Championship when Thiesse's vice-skip Busche died from cancer. Buche's sudden, young death hit Thiesse and the rest of the Duluth junior curlers hard.
The next season Thiesse returned to competition with the Bauman sisters remaining on the front end of the team and Rebecca Funk replacing Busche at third. The team started the season off strong, winning the Minnesota Junior Women's State Championship. At the 2013 Junior Nationals it looked like Thiesse was going to defend to her title when she finished the round-robin as the number one seed with a 8–1 record, but ultimately she had to settle for the silver medal when they lost the final to Miranda Solem's team by a single point. Thiesse would still get to play at the 2013 World Junior Championships though, as Solem asked her to join as their alternate. Thiesse would play in four games at the World Juniors as they finished in seventh place with a 4–5 record.
After Thiesse returned from the World Championship she rejoined her Junior Nationals team, plus Mackenzie Lank as alternate, for one more event at the end of the season, the qualifier to represent the United States at the 2013 Winter Universiade. The University Games Qualifier had five of the top Junior Women's teams and six of the top Junior Men's teams in the country competing. Tied after the round-robin, Thiesse defeated Becca Hamilton's team in a tiebreaker to earn their trip to the Winter Universiade next season.
2013–2016: Junior High Performance Program
Over the 2013 off-season it was announced that the Christensen team was joining the United States Curling Association's (USCA) Project 2018 Program, to which they were invited due to winning the University Games Qualifier at the end of the previous season. The Project 2018 Program was a part of the USCA High Performance Program intended to nurture junior curlers, with success at the 2018 Winter Olympics as the goal.
Thiesse , Funk, and the Bauman sisters started the 2013–14 season off playing in a series of World Curling Tour (WCT) bonspiels as a lead up to the 2013 Winter Universiade. They only won one game in each of the Fort Wayne Summer Cash Spiel, the St. Paul Cash Spiel, and the Molson Cash Spiel but won the 2013 FSCC Early Cash bonspiel in Blaine, Minnesota, their first WCT win. At the Winter Universiade, held in Trentino, Italy, Sonja Bauman and Mackenzie Lank swapped positions, with Lank taking over at lead. The team missed the playoffs, finished the round-robin in eighth place with a 3–6 record.
The USCA's High Performance Advisory Group picked Thiesse 's team and Korey Dropkin's team (the American boys' team at the Winter Universiade) to automatically earn berths at the 2014 United States Junior Nationals so they didn't need to worry about play-downs, which were held very close in time to when the Winter Universiade occurred. Thiesse 's team had a slightly tweaked line-up for Junior Nationals, with MacKenzie Lank at third, Anna Bauman still at second, Anna Hopkins joining the team at lead, and Sonja Bauman remaining as alternate. With a win over Sarah Anderson's team in the final, Thiesse earned her second Junior Nationals title. At the 2014 World Junior Championship Thiesse missed the payoffs, finishing in 6th place with a 5–4 record.