Englot’s long road to glory

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This article was published 24/02/2017 (3351 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — The draw was close to perfect. As soon as it left Michelle Englot’s hand, she knew it was headed into the heart of the rings. Still, her face betrayed little excitement, as she watched it slide down the sheet.

When that hammer settled near the button, she’d scored three in the sixth end against Rachel Homan. It wasn’t the only big shot of the game, or the only critical end, but going up 8-4 there was pivotal. It’s hard to recover from that.

Team Ontario didn’t. After Englot threw her last rock in the 10th, the final score was set at 9-8. Just like that, for the second night in a row, Homan — the top women’s curler in the world — fell to four Manitobans in buffalo jackets.

And just like that, for the first time in eight tries, Englot is one win away from a Canadian championship. For more than three decades she’s chased this moment; the best she’d done before was falling one game short of the final.

“It is surreal, for sure,” Englot said, moments after the win. “It’s just been such an amazing week. We’ve had such a great time. We’ve enjoyed every aspect of this event. We’ve had great fans, and we’ve played well on the ice.”

While Team Manitoba was on that dream run, a buzz was slowly building. Now, it’s followed them to the top.

The surprise of this Scotties is there weren’t many surprises. Northwest Territories skip Kerry Galusha’s spirited run was crowd-pleaser; she still missed the playoffs, though she did win the Scotties’ sportsmanship award.

There was Quebec’s Eve Belisle, who quietly built a 7-4 record while the spotlight roamed elsewhere. That was almost good enough for a tiebreaker; some years, it would have put her in the playoffs. Not this time, though.

No, this time the final four shook out exactly they way they were supposed to, on paper: Englot, Homan, Carey, McCarville. It was the order in which they finished that got people talking; and that talk was all about Manitoba.

Or, more to the point, it was about Michelle Englot. It was about how, 29 years after she went 9-2 in her Scotties debut, she’d finally done herself one better. She’d finished first in the round robin, after beating Homan once.

Then Friday night, she did what many curling fans declared was nearly impossible: she beat Homan twice.

If she can win it all Sunday night, she will become the oldest skip to clinch a Canadian title. Even in curling, where long careers often endure multiple twist endings, it’s not often you see comeback stories this exciting.

So let’s pause to consider Englot’s incredible journey, the long arc that’s carried her from a family farm near Montmartre, Sask. to the brink of a 2017 Canadian championship, wearing the last colours she ever expected.

At the Manitoba playdowns, she was a curiosity. When she won, it was an eyebrow-raiser. Jennifer Jones is the sport’s biggest star; after Chelsea Carey moved west, spitfire Kerri Einarson emerged as Manitoba’s heir apparent.

While those teams fell out in the playoffs; Englot held the ship steady to win. So, what was a province to make of a skip who was once near-synonymous with Saskatchewan curling, now become the granite queen of Manitoba?

True, the team in front of her are buffalo gals, born and raised. The front end of Leslie Wilson and Raunora Westcott have been Manitoba fixtures since they were juniors; third Kate Cameron was recently a promising young skip.

Still, the sport’s headlines fixate on the career arcs of skips: their triumphs, their failures, their quests for gold.

Before the 2017 Scotties began, some Manitobans didn’t know Englot, at least not the way Saskatchewan fans did. To others, she was almost too familiar: a low-key 53-year-old vet in a sport filling up with ambitious young shooters.

This week in St. Catharines, any misconceptions about her were shattered. With the team in front of her chugging along steady, Englot showed that, after three decades, her decorated career may only now be hitting its peak.

“Michelle is so hot,” second Leslie Wilson said, after Friday’s win. “She’s just on fire right now, it’s so exciting.”

That hype is beginning to spread. Over the course of this week, curling reporters began to receive more comments from fans about Team Manitoba, most of them saying the same thing: “I’m beginning to love this team.”

Partly, it’s that Englot herself is a great story. She’s not brassy, but she’s tough. Her son Derek Schneider says she’s the most competitive person he’s ever known, which is notable considering he played competitive minor hockey.

There’s something else about her, though. Maybe, it’s that so many women can see something of themselves in her. She’s been an eight-time provincial champion, a busy communications professional, a single mom to two sons.

In other words, she’s had to walk a long road, to get here. She’s had to give up a lot. So her talent doesn’t seem unreachable; it’s not bathed in a celebrity glow. She’s a woman who just kept on trucking, in life and in curling.

And now, she’s just kept on winning, even when some didn’t think it was likely.

“It’s kind of funny, because we all talked about having the belief that we will win,” Wilson said. “It’s one thing to believe you can do it, it’s another thing to do it and be there in the end. But we’ve all been playing so well.”

Watching how she did it was instructive. Englot hits the gym, but doesn’t have the bomb weight Homan likes to throw; you don’t see her coiling up for many rocket runbacks. (On this rink, that’s third Cameron’s job.)

What she showed this week was touch. On delicate draws, on hits that required less force than precision, Englot was often precise and consistent. She wasn’t perfect, of course. She had her fair share of soft shots, and weak starts.

The team had her back, when those happened. Even when Englot stumbled, she never came undone.

On the media bench, a Winnipeg reporter (okay, it was me) cultivated an inside joke after Englot went up 6-0 in the round robin. At that point, the joke ran, she would henceforth be referred to as “Winnipeg’s Michelle Englot.”

Not everyone understood it. The skip did, which is why she laughed gamely whenever anyone asked whether it felt strange to wear black and gold, or whether she’d hide her Riders jerseys; this geographic rivalry has a life of its own.

Yet as she kept winning, that fact became more amusing, and fans became more open to de facto adoption. After all, when you think of it, are Manitoba and Saskatchewan really all that different? We’re all prairie people here, aren’t we?

Then you think of the hours she spent in the car last year, driving to Winnipeg from Regina. The long, straight ride down the Trans-Canada Highway; the practice ice waiting at the end of it; the commitment she made to this team.

It’s not over, you know. Whatever happens Sunday, this isn’t the end of a story; it’s just the end of its first chapter.

This team was built to make the Olympic trials. That’s why they called Englot, after Kristy McDonald stepped away from the game. A run at the Scotties was in the plans, for certain, but their target is this year’s Roar of the Rings.

There are nine total spots in the Olympic trials. Homan and Jones each hold one. It is entirely possible, looking at the women’s team standings, Manitoba could see three teams in December’s trials.

But before that, we may see a Manitoban team at worlds. At that point, it won’t matter who once wore green or gold. No matter where they grew up, or where they call home, all curlers are chasing the same goal: red and white.

“It would be incredible,” Englot said. “I have put a lot of time into (the game). I have such a solid team. I’m just hoping to stay the course and stay focused and relaxed, and come out and do what we do.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca