Micholson punches ticket for Stonewall

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This article was published 22/01/2024 (803 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brad Micholson’s team surprised themselves all the way to the men’s provincial curling championship.

Micholson’s squad out of Deer Lodge escaped a back-and-forth contest against Paul Scinocca that came down to the final rock. With the game tied — and a berth to the provincial championship on the line — Micholson was lying two but Scinocca had what looked to be a routine hit-and-stick for the win.

“I wasn’t counting us out, but I was not counting us in,” said Micholson, 41.

That was until Scinocca nicked a rock at the top of the house and spilled out of play to give Micholson a 7-6 victory in the C event of the Manitoba Open at St. Vital on Monday, punching a ticket to his first provincial championship.

Micholson, third Ian Campbell, second Ryan Lagace, first Paul Neilands and spare Norm Gautron are in their second season together. They reached the C event semifinals last year.

“For probably six or seven years, our entire goal was to make it to Sunday and we couldn’t do it,” Micholson said. “This year, we’ve been curling a little more seriously just kind of getting ready for this.

“We were curling amazing, especially Ian — he’s the MVP. Our first couple of games went well, they were fairly easy, and then after that, every name we came up against we’re like, ‘Uh, oh. We’ll see how this game goes.’ Every game was a little bit stressful but we squeaked them out.”

On the next sheet over, Andrew Irving’s team out of Fort Rouge knocked off Granite’s Dean Dunstone 4-1 to win the A event for the second year in a row. Irving and Dunstone had already secured their seats in provincials, making the championship contest in the top draw fight for bragging rights.

Irving will make his 10th appearance at provincials, his second as a skip. This time he’ll go with third Brad Van Walleghem, second Alex Forrest, first Roy Janz and spare Ronan Gueret.

“It’s more the bonspiel. I think we kind of are a good team for this bonspiel. We’re all friends, we play in a league Wednesday night, we just happen to be OK curlers,” Irving said. “We come out here and try to take in everything.

“There’s something about this bonspiel that we just do well in, I don’t know what it is. This bonspiel has a lot of lustre for us, it’s just that one time of year when you can just get together, travel around, leave the kids at home and have fun.”

Four other winners were crowned at St. Vital on Monday. Steen Sigurdson, who had already earned his spot in the provincial championship, defeated Corey Chambers 6-4 to win the B event; Lucas Pedersen triumphed over Tom Cameron 12-7 to take the D event; Michael Zacharias beat Tom Scott 9-4 to win the E event; Kritsy Mackie beat Andrew Wickman 5-4 in the F event final.

The men’s provincial curling championship is set for Feb. 7-11 in Stonewall.

jfreysam@freepress.mb.ca

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