Elite curlers Dawn and Mike McEwens consider mixed doubles

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This article was published 16/10/2015 (3823 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Within minutes of word going out in June mixed doubles curling would be gilded Olympic, Canadian fans were already dreaming up their fantasy duos.

Elite curling is a small and notably interrelated world, after all. So here’s the fun news: at least one of those potential dream teams could come true.

“We’re talking about it,” Mike McEwen said Thursday, about a possible joint effort with his wife, Dawn McEwen. “There’s a very real possibility that Dawn and I would play in the mixed doubles nationals this year in Saskatoon. We’re pretty excited to do that. Hopefully the timing works out.”

Of course, he’s quick to add, the scheduling bit could be tough. They’re both so focused on their main gigs — Dawn throwing silky lead stones for Jennifer Jones, Mike skipping his top-ranked foursome — and mixed doubles strategies are still mostly foreign. Meanwhile, the McEwens are busy with another challenge, one with even higher stakes than the Olympics: they welcomed their first child, daughter Vienna, in August.

So, they’ll take it easy with the dream team… to start.

“It’ll be a learning curve for us for sure,” McEwen said. “We’ll see how things transpire from there. Maybe it’s something we can invest more time in, depending on schedules and if we were to win a big mixed doubles event, maybe we’d have to re-evaluate what we can do.”

For now, though, McEwen is back in his usual hack, and off to another hot start. Through the first three events of the season, the team of McEwen, third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld has blazed to an 18-4 record.

They opened their campaign with a semifinal appearance in the new Grand Slam of Curling Tour Challenge, then proceeded to win their next two big bonspiels in Saskatoon and Toronto.

Now, their quest is bringing them back to friendly ice. Of the 32 teams that will converge in Portage la Prairie for the Canad Inns Prairie Classic this weekend, few have more reason to feel at home in that barn: not only is the Winnipeg-based McEwen foursome on sort-of home turf, but they’ve also won the Classic in four of the last five years. (The exception: in 2012, Alberta’s Kevin Koe knocked McEwen out in the quarter-final and went on to win.)

Of course, with a rich $60,000 purse and a field that includes pretty much all of the usual suspects — Koe, Brad Gushue, Glenn Howard, Brad Jacobs and Reid Carruthers, the gang’s all here — history doesn’t guarantee the future. Whatever happens at the Portage Curling Club this weekend, it’ll be a tough task to win.

“We definitely don’t take it for granted,” McEwen said. “We have to go out there every year and put our best on the ice to win. It’s not going to be handed to us. Maybe (the winning record) is in our opponents’ heads, but we feel every time we have to come with our best.”

Plus, as has widely been observed, the top tier of the sport is getting tighter each season. If it’s an arms race, then McEwen’s foursome has been stockpiling more weapons than most: this off-season, they hit the gym hard and signed Jon Mead to be their “utility man” as coach, manager and fifth.

They also tweaked their approach to mental conditioning. These days, McEwen mused, the psychology of it all is critical to performance. He’s not the only curler around the top levels who has taken up meditation.

“Everybody’s trying to get into their Buddha space,” McEwen said. “Curling’s one of those sports where there’s a lot of time to think. Between the moment of action and intensity, there’s a lot of time to get off track of where your focus needs to be.”

Maybe, that mental part is also a question of finding a balance. And maybe there’s few things better for that than becoming a parent, when everything changes: yeah, on one hand it’s busy. Practice ice for the McEwens now means bundling Vienna up for the trip to the curling club and taking turns watching her while throwing.

On the other hand, the McEwens will be taking her on her first flight later this month, when both their teams compete in the Grand Slam Masters of Curling in Nova Scotia.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca