Expensive education paying off

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This article was published 10/04/2011 (5510 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

REGINA — He’s only 26, but Reid Carruthers has paid his dues. In cold hard cash.

Long before he got on the golden ride that has been his first winter as second for Team Canada’s Jeff Stoughton — a ride that will culminate here this evening in the final of the 2011 World Men’s Curling Championship — Carruthers was just another young Manitoba curler trying to get some much needed experience on the cashspiel circuit.

It is an expensive way for competitive curlers to learn and it was never more costly for Carruthers than in 2007-2008 when Carruthers — with third Jason Gunnlaugson — dropped over $60,000 curling a very ambitious bonspiel schedule.

Bonspieling is, of course, the best way for a young team to get better and begin the long path towards separating yourself from the huge pack that are the also-rans at spiels all winter long.

But it is also a very expensive way to learn when you aren’t cashing much in the way of cheques.

“We spent between 60 and 70 grand that winter travelling around with Jason,” Carruthers recalled the other day. “And we didn’t have much in sponsorship and I think by the end of the year, we’d won maybe $25,000 on tour.

“I was still going to school at the time and it put a pretty big dent in the wallet.”

But what seemed like lost money at the time looks today, with a world championship just one win away, like the best investment Carruthers ever made.

“Four or five years ago, I didn’t think I’d be in this situation,” says Carruthers. “But was I preparing myself to be in this situation? I’d say so. I was out on the tour playing against the best, learning from the best, trying to get to that next level.”

Mission accomplished. Carruthers underwent knee surgery last year and changed his tuck delivery to a flat-foot version that puts less stress on the knee.

And then the skip reinvented himself on the ice as the second for Stoughton this season, with phenomenal results. Carruthers led all seconds in shooting percentage this week — 88 — and Team Canada third Jon Mead believes what Carruthers has accomplished in such a short time has earned him a special spotlight.

“How a guy that age changes delivery, changes position, comes off a knee injury and puts himself in the upper echelons at his position — it’s an incredible story,” Mead said.

But it — and he — can get better yet.

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“I’ve still got some learning to do,” says Carruthers. “But it has been so much fun on the ice this year, it has just been easy to be relaxed about curling and focus on being a good teammate.”

Carruthers was asked for a thought on how differently things have worked out for Gunnlaugson, who made headlines of his own this winter when he was hired to play as the national men’s team in Russia — in the lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — only to get fired barely a couple of months into the job.

“Things could have worked out good for Jason too. And they might still,” said Carruthers. “He had a great opportunity to go curl for Russia and I think a lot of curlers would have done that.”

Carruthers chose a different path, a path that may pay the biggest dividend of all tonight.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca