‘Fantastic,’ Montford says of dad’s arena ice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/01/2011 (5698 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ALTONA — There is at least one curler in the field here at the 2011 Scotties Tournament of Hearts who won’t be complaining about the ice conditions this week.

Skip Michelle Montford is the daughter of icemaker Eric Montford and she seems to have been schooled well in who to blame when things go wrong.

“It’s never the ice,” said the younger Montford. “It’s always the players.”

While it might seem like there would be an advantage to being the daughter of the icemaker, Montford is actually getting her first experience this week with what her father does best — make championship ice.

“I’ve never played before on arena ice,” she says. “This is fantastic.”

Montford said all she got in terms of information from her father coming into this event was what to expect in a championship setting on arena ice. “But in terms of this rock curling three feet or this rock curling four feet? No, he doesn’t know himself. He doesn’t throw the rocks.”

Exactly, says the senior Montford. “There’s nothing I could tell her that I wouldn’t tell another curler who asked,” says the icemaker. “And the fact is that half the time I don’t know what the ice is going to do. We think we do, but we get tricked all the time, too.”

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The teams here this week are competing to represent Manitoba at the national Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Feb. 19-27 in Charlottetown, P.E.I.

Three of the 12 teams that will be in Charlottetown have already been determined. Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones is the defending champion and will represent Team Canada, while B.C. and Newfoundland have already completed their provincial women’s playdowns.

B.C. was won last Sunday by native Winnipegger Kelly Scott, who defeated 2002 Olympic bronze medallist Kelley Law 5-3 in the final.

And in Newfoundland, Stacie Devereaux defeated Shelley Nicholls to send her young team to their first national women’s championship.

Manitobans will remember Devereaux as the skip who stunned Manitoba’s Calleen Neufeld in the 2007 Canadian Juniors, taking three in the final end to snatch the national championship from Neufeld by a 7-6 score.

— — —

The website www.curlingzone.com — a lifeline for curling fans and competitors during the season — was still down Thursday as site administrators struggled to get back online after a baffling cyber attack on Jan. 14.

The site is run by a couple of tireless volunteers — Gerry Geurts, of London, Ont., and Dallas Bittle of Vancouver — and it tracks curling results, statistics and schedules for the cashspiel and playdowns seasons, internationally, nationally and provincially.

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Geurts told George Karrys of the Canadian Curling News that some American curling sites were attacked about the same time on Jan. 14 and the man behind the U.S. curling sites — American computer guru Dan Field — had tracked those attacks to China and Korea.

Why anyone would waste time taking down non-profit curling sites is still unknown, but Geurts told Karrys it’s going to cost at least $6,000 to retrieve the two years worth of data knocked out by the attack and get back online.

Geurts has set up a Paypal account and is accepting donations at a site skeleton at curlingzone.com.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca