McEwen the champ again

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This article was published 13/02/2022 (1531 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The future is bright for Manitoba curling, but the present still belongs to Mike McEwen.

McEwen, Reid Carruthers, Derek Samagalski, and Colin Hodgson successfully fought off a pair of up and comers on Sunday to win the 2022 Viterra Championship at the Selkirk Curling Club.

After losing to 26-year-old Colton Lott out of Winnipeg Beach on Saturday night in the 1 vs. 2 playoff, McEwen was forced to meet Fort Rouge’s Ryan Wiebe — a 21-year-old that beat defending champ Jason Gunnlaugson twice this week — in the semifinal on Sunday morning. It came down to the last rock with McEwen prevailing 10-9, setting up a rematch in the final against a red-hot Lott side that hadn’t lost all week.

But the experience of Team McEwen — a group that now has 20 combined provincial men’s titles — ended up being too much for Lott to handle in the big game. McEwen rolled to an 8-3 victory in eight ends to win his fourth career Manitoba championship. It’s the second provincial crown for McEwen with his current crop of teammates since they joined forces in 2018.

“This one felt like the hardest one,” said McEwen, who has played in the Viterra final every year since 2014. “I’ve been in a lot of finals and I don’t know, this one really took a lot out of us. It’s very satisfying. We were pushed very, very hard.”

One of the biggest obstacles for the West St. Paul foursome was the health of Hodgson. McEwen’s lead was far from 100 per cent as he’s dealing with some micro tears in his quad. Hodgson sat out Friday, leaving McEwen to play with a three-man unit, but he managed to tough it out and return for playoff action on the weekend. Hodgson was seen wiping tears from his eyes after the championship game.

“I tried to hide it the best I could all week… But every slide was painful. Every sweep was painful,” said Hodgson, who believes it’s been an underlying issue for several years that really started to bother him in December at the Brantford Mixed Doubles Curling Classic with partner Chelsea Carey.

“I was trying to figure out ‘What can I do? How much do I have in the tank to get through the game and leave it out there?’ Suppressing all that for so long, you know, we’re males in sport, it’s not necessarily OK to cry. I think it was a floodgate of suppressing that all week. Win or lose, there needed to be a mental release there at the end. And the guys had my back all week… This was the most fulfilling provincials I played in, regardless of the outcome of that game.”

With the Brier set for March 4-13 in Lethbridge, Alta., McEwen will have to quickly figure out how they’re going to handle Hodgson’s injury. But for right now, they’re going to enjoy the win and the fact that they’ll be wearing the buffalo jacket at nationals. After losing the 2020 Viterra final to Gunnlaugson, and with the 2021 provincial tournament getting axed because of the pandemic, McEwen was forced to play in the Brier as a wild card team. McEwen ended up in a tie for ninth place at last year’s Brier.

“I thought it didn’t matter what jacket I wore at the Brier. That’s what I thought, but I was wrong… When you put on the Manitoba colours, there’s just a little bit more sense of responsibility. There’s that pride of representing your province and there’s a little bit of pressure to do well. I feel like it’s not that it isn’t quite there with the wild card, but there just isn’t as much of it. And I want that pressure,” said McEwen.

“I’m going to relish wearing the colours again. I feel to perform at a very high level, I think I need the pressure. I felt like I wasn’t getting it wearing wild card colours.”

He didn’t get the ending he was hoping for, but Lott, who started the year as a third for Pat Simmons, had a sensational Viterra. Lott plays behind Kyle Doering, Tanner Lott, and Emerson Klimpke.

“It was clear to me that Team Lott was the best team this week,” Hodgson said. “They pushed us to figure out how to match them and have a good game in the final.”

It was only Lott’s third event as skip of this group and they showed a ton of promise, but they had too many misses on Sunday to get it done.

“There’s so much to build off of and it just adds to the experience and knowing how to feel in these situations and better prepare ourselves in the future,” Lott said. “… We just weren’t quite as sharp today as we were in our previous games and it showed.”

The semifinal between Wiebe and McEwen looked like it was going to get ugly early. McEwen scored five in the second end to go up 5-2, but Wiebe managed to settle down, score three in the third, and make things interesting.

Wiebe and Lott look poised to contend at the Viterra for many years to come.

“Up until now, we haven’t had too many games against top level teams in the world,” Wiebe said. “So, just to get these games under our belt and play really well in them and show a ton of composure and calmness, I think moving forward, it does so much for our confidence.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31