McEwen survives early scare, nips pesky Reynolds

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This article was published 10/02/2016 (3840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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SELKIRK — Mike McEwen got a good scare but emerged with a win Wednesday morning on the opening draw of the Manitoba men’s curling championship.

Playing 31st seed Justin Reynolds of Winnipeg Beach, McEwen was clinging to a 5-4 lead in the ninth end when he played a quiet tap with the final rock of the end to score three and finally put the feisty Reynolds foursome away.

“They’re not the 31st seed,” said McEwen with a laugh. “I didn’t really know them, but some of the boys are from the Gimli area, and (McEwen third) B.J. Neufeld said, ‘Yeah, they’ll play well against us.’

“And they certainly made a lot of shots.”

It’s the nature of this 32-team event that club curlers like the Reynolds team get matched up with elite squads like McEwen’s, who is ranked second right now on the World Curling Tour money list.

That poses unique challenges for a skip such as McEwen, who usually knows his fellow opponents when he’s curling on the cash tour.

“Familiarity is a sort of nice thing to have,” said McEwen. “And you can’t step back from the way you play just because you’ve never seen the team before.”

McEwen and his foursome — Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld — are seeking their first Manitoba men’s championship this week after losing five finals and a semifinal since 2010.

McEwen was asked if this is the year his squad finally gets to the Brier.

“I think so,” said McEwen.

“We’ve never been more prepared. So if being more prepared than ever before — if that’s what it takes to win a championship — then I think we’ve turned over just about every stone we could have this season.

“So there will be no regrets as far as there’s something else we could have done.”

In other games on the opening draw, Brandon’s Terry McNamee defeated St. Adolphe’s Murray Woodward 6-3, Granite’s David Bohn defeated Springfield’s Rylan Young 11-3, Assiniboine-Memorial’s Dennis Bohn defeated Dauphin’s Greg Todoruk 8-6 and Fort Rouge’s Tyler Drews beat Granite’s Taylor McIntyre 7-6.

Newly crowned Canadian junior champion Matt Dunstone was a winner in his debut at the Manitoba men’s curling championship.

Dunstone, who won his second Canadian title Jan. 31, defeated Lorne Hamblin 8-4 on the second draw.

Dunstone and his junior squad are using this week’s Viterra Championship as a tune-up for the world juniors, which takes place March 5-13 in Denmark.

That’s the exact same dates as this year’s Brier in Ottawa, meaning Dunstone would have a conflict if he were to win a Manitoba men’s title in the final here Sunday.

Dunstone said he’s already committed to curling in the world juniors no matter what happens this week, meaning he could conceivably become probably the first skip ever to turn down a chance to curl in the Brier.

“They’re at the exact time, so the Brier is already out of the question if we were to pull off some kind of miracle run here at the Viterra,” said Dunstone.

“It’s a tough decision to make. It’d be a good decision to have to make. But we have a goal for a world junior championship. We want to be gold medallists there.”

Dunstone won bronze at the 2013 world juniors.

While Dunstone’s team curled at this event last year, the skip didn’t because he was skipping a university team at the 2015 Universiade.

Defending Manitoba men’s champion Reid Carruthers got his title defence underway with a 12-1 drumming of Thompson’s Shaun Parsons on the 4 p.m. draw Wednesday.

Parsons was simply no match for Carruthers, giving up an opening-end deuce and then consecutive steals of three, two, four and one.

Even the one point Parsons did score in the sixth end before conceding defeat was a gift: a last-rock draw by Parsons was heavy, but Carruthers stopped it on the button with his foot and a sympathetic official counted the point for Parsons.

Carruthers empathized with the northerners after the game.

“It’s a little unfair,” said Carruthers, “because those guys don’t play on (arena) ice like this all year long.

“And for us, this is a regular thing getting to play in an arena.”

The Carruthers-Parsons matchup was actually one of two 12-1 games on the 4 p.m. draw — Thistle’s Scott Ramsay also beat Fort Rouge’s Hayden Forrester 12-1.

In other scores on the third draw, Brandon’s Steve Irwin beat Granite’s Doug Harrison 8-2, La Salle’s Randy Neufeld beat Granite’s Mark Lukowich 9-4 and East St. Paul’s Alex Forrest beat Minnedosa’s Butch Mouck 5-2.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek