Loud and proud

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This article was published 22/02/2017 (3432 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — Derek Schneider has a job here, at the 2017 Scotties. It’s not a difficult one, but he doesn’t take it lightly either. So every day he pulls on a uniform, a Manitoba sweatshirt, which he admits still feels strange.

Look, it’d take any good ol’ Regina boy a few days to get used to that. To ease the adjustment, he laughs, sometimes he cheers holding something green; he does have a cousin on Penny Barker’s Saskatchewan champion team.

But make no mistake, Schneider’s job is to be loud for Team Manitoba — and for his mom, skip Michelle Englot.

“I’m here to try and keep her as loose as possible,” Schneider said, as Englot prepared to face Nova Scotia Wednesday. “I couldn’t miss this for the world… I was booking the flight the next day, once they won Manitoba.”

So every draw, he joins the small army of Manitoba fans at Meridian Centre. He cheers, he chants, he blows the team’s signature train whistle. When Manitoba wins, he runs down to offer his mom a celebratory fist-bump.

If you’ve watched the Scotties on TSN, you’ve probably heard him; on Tuesday night, Schneider raised a particularly hearty pro-Manitoba ruckus. Afterwards, third Kate Cameron turned to Englot: “Aren’t you proud?” she asked.

The skip laughed. “Loudest one in the whole arena? Yeah sure, I’m proud,” she said, tongue just a little in cheek.

In a way, Schneider’s enthusiastic presence is more than just a display of filial affection. It is also a testament to what Englot has accomplished in her three-decade career — a legacy she’s polished, with her round-robin success here.

It’s not too often, for instance, a mom in the Scotties field will have kids older than her teammates. But at 26, Schneider is one year older than Manitoba third Cameron — a fact that is “pretty insane to me,” he says.

He is the youngest of Englot’s two sons, born just 11 months apart and both Scotties babies. Englot was nearly six months pregnant with Schneider in February of 1990, when she led Saskatchewan into the nationals in Ottawa.

So it goes without saying that the boys grew up around the sport. When they were young, Englot schlepped them between curling clubs; there’s a photo somewhere, she says, of Derek and his older brother Bret riding on a rock.

It wasn’t easy. For years, Englot raised the boys as a single mom, somehow finding ways to juggle curling, work and her sons’ demanding minor hockey careers. Now that Schneider is grown, he understands how much that took.

“That’s a pretty big testament to my mom,” he says. “It’s kind of amazing.”

So is the fact she’s here, Schneider adds. As a kid, he didn’t really grasp that his mom was a great curler; she did, after all, win her first Saskatchewan jacket before he was born, and took a step back while he was young.

But in 2008, Englot won Saskatchewan and competed in an emotional Scotties; her father died the day before the opening ceremony. That’s when Schneider, then 17, first remembers seeing his mom in highlight reels on TV.

“It was like ‘wow, she’s actually kind of a big deal,’” he says.

Now, that legacy is growing. After going two-for-two Wednesday, with round-robin wins over Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, Englot and Manitoba earned at least a tiebreaker. Today, they could clinch a playoff berth.

In seven previous appearances as a skip, Englot’s best round-robin finish came in 1988, when she went 9-2 in her Scotties debut. Twenty-nine years later, she could meet or exceed that mark.

For that longevity, her son credits her tenacity, and the “deep competitive fire” that she brings to the sheet.

“She’s calm on the outside, so it doesn’t really show,” he says. “But she is by far the most competitive person I know.”

As an example, he points to a silly game played this week: competitors slathered Vaseline on their face, then faceplanted into a pile of cotton balls. Whoever got the most to stick was the winner.

“She’s the type of person who wants to win that, too,” Schneider laughs. (Englot, on a team with Cameron, faced her son’s team in the final; Schneider won. “Of course he had to beat me,” she says. “He has a bigger head.”)

But hey, that’s just another example of the things a son will do to keep his mom’s spirits up. If the Manitobans can stay light, Schneider thinks, they’ll be a “tough team to beat” when playoffs begin.

So, as Englot and the buffalo gals get ready to close out their round robin today with a critical game against Rachel Homan in the 6:30 p.m. draw, there will surely be a lot of proud ’Toban fans watching their progress.

Few will be prouder than one good ol’ Saskatchewanian, who never imagined he’d cheer in a Manitoba sweatshirt.

“This is the best, to see them have success,” Schneider says. “She’s put so much work into it. She works out harder than anybody in the summer. They have a really talented team, and every person is putting in the work.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca