Big guns play for cash, others shoot for berths

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This article was published 14/12/2010 (5749 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THREE of the province’s biggest guns, Jeff Stoughton, Mike McEwen and Kevin Park, will curl this weekend at the $100,000 National in Vernon, B.C., but just about everyone else will be back home in Manitoba curling for a provincials berth.

The men’s zone playdowns take place this week across Manitoba. Stoughton and McEwen already have provincials berths and Park has been living in Edmonton this fall and is unlikely to be eligible to curl in the Manitoba playdowns this winter.

But just about every other men’s team in the province with any kind of aspirations will be curling this week for one of the coveted berths in February’s Manitoba men’s curling championship — the Safeway Championship — in Beausejour.

A total of 47 teams have entered to compete in seven Winnipeg zones, with playdowns also underway in rural Manitoba, all of it beginning Wednesday and wrapping up Sunday.

The 47 city entries this year is down slightly from the 50 teams that entered in each of the past two years. There was also a small decrease in entry numbers across the province, with 139 entries this year as compared to 151 entries in 2009-10 and 165 entries in 2008-09.

Pembina’s Dean Dunstone — with the ageless Peter Nicholls at third, Dean Moxham at second and Wayne Sigurdson at lead — has been annointed the top seed in the Winnipeg zones, followed by 1992 Brier champion Vic Peters, with Daley Peters, Kyle Werenich and Cory Naharnie.

The top-five is rounded out by Assiniboine-Memorial’s David Bohn, Deer Lodge’s Sean Grassie and West Kildonan’s Brendan Taylor.

— Paul Wiecek