The two necklaces

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This article was published 13/02/2016 (3501 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Watching at the rink or on TV, it’s easy to see what drives Kerri Einarson on the sheet, easy to glimpse her flashes of glee after big hits and gutsy ends.

To understand why Einarson really curls, though, one must look outside the house and find the twin glints hanging around her neck.

There are two of them, two necklaces the skip wears every time she sets a broom or settles in a hack. Each one tells a story about someone that is, in a way, curling with her — at least, someone other than her East St. Paul teammates, lead Kristin MacCuish, second Liz Fyfe and vice Selena Kaatz.

One necklace is for her grandmother. The other is for her brother. She doesn’t play without them, and they will be there next week in Grande Prairie, Alta.

When Einarson opens her first quest for a Canadian championship next week, it will be, as she says, “a dream come true.” The buffalo jacket will be new, the spotlight her biggest yet. But the story of how she got there will stay close to her chest, a reminder of how a rock-thrower from Petersfield grew up to be a Manitoba champion. The first necklace has a pendant, a granite curling rock. It belonged to Einarson’s grandmother Evelyn McAulay, who won it at the 2000 World Curling Championships in Scotland. That was the year Einarson’s uncle, British Columbia skip Greg McAulay, won the Brier in Saskatoon. The whole family trucked out to watch.

Einarson was just a tween then, a handful of years into her own curling career. She wrapped herself in a Team B.C. jacket, and “it got so gross and yellow from me wearing it all the time,” she said. That’s what she was wearing when McAulay faced Russ Howard in the final, and stole his way to a 5-3 win.

In the stands, Einarson was transfixed.

“That’s when I knew I wanted to do the same,” she said. “That’s just how I knew that this is something I want to do.”

When McAulay wore the Maple Leaf to Glasgow, Einarson’s grandmother followed him there. He won the worlds and she won the necklace, and for years she would hand it to her spitfire granddaughter to wear at big bonspiels. Shortly before she died, the elder McAulay gave the necklace to Einarson to keep forever.

So in that way, Einarson’s grandparents never really left her.

“My grandma and grandpa followed me everywhere,” the skip said. “They would call the curling rinks constantly. People were like ‘Oh, there’s the McAulays calling, wanting the updates of Kerri’s game.’ “

She told this story Tuesday night, in a seat overlooking the empty Selkirk Arena. It was the night before the Viterra Championships started, and Einarson’s newly minted Team Manitoba was tapped to deliver the ceremonial opening rock. First, though, they wanted to play a friendly game against junior Rebecca Lamb.

For Einarson and her teammates, it was just a chance to renew their acquaintance with arena ice. They hadn’t played a real game for over two weeks, not since the topsy-turvy Manitoba final in Beausejour, where they rode a stunning ninth-end steal of three to a comeback 7-5 win over top seed Kristy McDonald.

Two weeks later, the rush of it all had faded, but not the sense of relief.

“I’ve always been knocking on the door, even in juniors, and I could never get over that hill,” Einarson said. “I would always lose it in the semis, or get so close and just not be able to finish it off.”

Einarson, famously, had been to the Manitoba final the two previous seasons, losing in 2014 to Chelsea Carey and the next year to Jennifer Jones. The latter stung the most, she said, and she turned over again how if her eighth-end rock had settled just a couple of inches sooner, the outcome might have been different.

Indeed, she would think about that final loss over and over, in the ensuing months.

“It haunted me for awhile,” Einarson said. “I’m the type of person that sits there and thinks, ‘Why did I miss this shot?’ I rehearse things in my head. It’s probably why I don’t sleep much. I just sit there, and think about the little things.”

It’s surprising, almost, because to an outside observer the 2014 final against Carey would have seen the more advantageous matchup, the more winnable game. But to understand the difference, maybe one has to remember how this whole curling journey started — and where Einarson dreams it could end up.

She assembled the team in 2014, after her previous squad disbanded. She and second Fyfe wanted to keep going, so they approached Kaatz, an accomplished junior curler who had won Manitoba in 2012 playing third for Shannon Birchard. Kaatz agreed to come along on the condition that MacCuish could join the team.

Shortly thereafter, Einarson learned she and her husband Kyle Einarson were expecting their first child. Then, the couple learned they were actually expecting their first two children, that she would have newborn twins when the season started. Einarson asked if her teammates still wanted her to skip; they did.

“I was like, ‘I’m still in this. I still really want to curl, I have goals that I want to achieve,’ ” she said. “They were like, ‘of course.’ I was still 100 per cent committed. Then we ended up doing so well, even with me barely having any sleep, dealing with the girls. We had a great season.”

Behind her surging performance, though, there was something deeper. Which brings the story back to her second curling necklace, this one holding a photo of Einarson and her brother, Kyle Flett. He was one year older, but the siblings went through school together and had the same friends. Everyone thought they were twins.

It helped they were both talented young curlers, playing out of a bustling junior program in Petersfield. They played on a mixed team with their parents, though the sibling rivalry would bust out on the ice.

“I think they were ready to strangle the both of us,” Einarson said, and laughed. “We did not get along at all.”

Soon, they were rising champions. Flett won a Manitoba under-18 title; Einarson, who started skipping when she was 14, and was soon a regular in the top junior ranks; she qualified for her first provincials in Beausejour not too long after. (Holding her name card in the grand entrance that year: a 10-year-old Selena Kaatz.)

In 2005, her brother’s team made the Manitoba junior final, where he faced Daley Peters. His team played well, but in one end it came apart; Peters went on to win. Sometimes, Einarson still thinks back to what would have happened, if her brother made a different call. He never got another chance to chase a buffalo jacket.

One year later, on the morning of Dec. 17, 2006, Kyle hopped on his snowmobile to fetch a hat he’d left at a bar the night before. Somehow, the sled rolled, and the 20-year-old Flett did not survive. In his obituary, the family asked that donations go to Petersfield’s junior curling program; a bonspiel there now bears his name.

The accident came just days before Einarson made her own provincial junior bid. She almost didn’t play. But she knew her brother would have wanted to see her on the sheet, so she went out with her team and tried. They didn’t play too well, but in a way just competing was a victory.

“That was a very hard time in my life,” she said simply, but the necklace holds a photo of the two of them together, so in that way he is still with her.

She sees it sometimes in other things too, other little signs. At the beginning of this season, Einarson was in Newfoundland, preparing for the second-tier final of the Tour Challenge. Before the game against Saskatchewan’s Amber Holland, she retreated to the washroom and did what she does before so many critical games.

Which is to say, she was sharing a moment with her brother. “I said, ‘OK Kyle, this is our time, let’s go out here and play well,’ ” she recalled.

Suddenly, the blowdryer on the wall started whirring. There was nobody else in the room. Einarson, a little spooked, ran back and told her teammates, who roundly agreed it was a sign. With that, they marched out to face Holland and won 8-2 to cap an undefeated run.

“I just had goosebumps that whole entire game,” Einarson said. “I could really feel him with me. Same with my grandma and grandpa.”

That early win set everything else in motion. It earned her a berth to the elite Masters, where she made it to the semifinal in her grand slam debut. The merit points she gathered also launched her into The National, where she played her way to a tiebreaker game — and got crucial experience playing against the world’s best.

Now, on the brink of her first Scotties Tournament of Hearts bid, Einarson is setting her sights higher again. Her team is fixated on making playoffs, she said, and in this wild year at nationals — one which saw top contenders Rachel Homan and Val Sweeting fail to qualify — they have a darn good shot.

Besides, this trip to the Scotties isn’t only about the winning. It’s also about carrying the torch of a family tradition. Its present is with Einarson, now. Its past, she keeps around the neck. And as for the future — well, though her twins Kamryn and Khloe won’t be in Alberta, the toddlers will be watching.

“I just keep telling myself, I’m doing this because I want my girls to have something to look up to, and carry the curling in our family,” she said. “If I can keep that going for them, I know when they see mummy on TV, they’re going to be like, ‘I want to do that,’ just like how I saw my uncle do it.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca