On their team, it’s almost all relative Curling cousins in house

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This article was published 16/02/2011 (5660 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HALIFAX — If curling isn’t literally in the blood of three-quarters of the Manitoba girls curling team at the 2011 Canada Games, it’s at least in their DNA.

Three of its members — skip Beth Peterson, third Robyn Njegovan and second Melissa Gordon — are cousins, all sharing one set of the same grandparents. (Peterson’s mom, Njegovan’s mom and Gordon’s dad are siblings.)

And their lead, Breanne Yozenko, is about as close to family as you can get. Not only has she gone to school with her skip since they were little, but they shared an experience that’s arguably the most crucial to a curler’s early development.

“We were in curling daycare together,” Yozenko said.

So while their parents were throwing stones at the Victoria Curling Club on William Avenue, the two toddlers were no doubt laying the foundation for provincial dominance, first in Little Rocks competition, then in the junior ranks for the past six years, culminating with their recent victory at the Canada Games trials.

Their opponents in Halifax this week shouldn’t be surprised if Team Manitoba is slow to come to a consensus on a particular shot, the cousins say.

“We fight a lot more (than other teams),” said Peterson. “We’re kind of like sisters. But we get over it right away.”

“We’re forced to love each other,” Njegovan laughed. “We’re not scared to say things to each other.”

Perhaps not wanting to start an argument, Gordon looked at her two cousins and nodded in agreement.

The entire team has been curling for more than a decade, so there’s not much to choose between them in the shot-making department. So when it came to picking positions, the only spot that was really coveted was third.

“You get to do everything,” said Njegovan, the winner of this particular battle. “You call the line for the skip and you get to sweep.”

“Nobody wanted to be skip,” Peterson added. “So I said I’d do it.”

The team sits in fourth place in their pool with a record of one win and three losses. They defeated the host and previously unbeaten Nova Scotians 7-3 on Tuesday.

The three cousins admit it’s a bit weird to be singled out for being related. They were featured on the front page of the Team Manitoba daily newsletter, Toba Talk, on Tuesday, with a trivia question asking which was which.

“We’ve got more attention than we expected,” Njegovan said. “We’ve been curling together for six years and nobody has noticed it before.”

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The girls’ coach, Rob Lamb, said having three cousins on the team doesn’t change his approach, but it does make for an interesting dynamic.

“They have their own language,” he said. “They finish each other’s sentences and thoughts all the time.”

Even though Yozenko isn’t a blood relative, she’s an equal in every way with her teammates, he said.

“It’s not them and her. It’s absolutely all for one and one for all. There’s a lot of love on this team,” he said.

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca