In the Rings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/02/2008 (6688 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Two-time defending champion Jeff Stoughton won his 18th consecutive provincial playdowns game with an 8-2 win over No. 4 seed Mike McEwen late Friday night, leading three other teams — Kerry Burtnyk, David Bohn and Allan Lyburn — into this morning’s 9 a.m. A-side playoff round.

Stoughton, with lead Steve Gould, has won the last two Safeway Championships — in Steinbach and Dauphin — with undefeated records and Friday’s easy win over McEwen was his fourth win here in Brandon for a cumulative mark of 18-0.

Burtnyk beat Peter Nicholls 8-4 and Bohn crushed Portage’s Don Spriggs 9-6 late Friday as both remained undefeated while Lyburn, of Brandon, cracked three in the ninth end to dump No. 3 seed Vic Peters 10-7.

Lyburn will play Burtnyk — who beat him Friday morning to hand him his first loss — this morning while Stoughton will take on Bohn in the two A-side finals. Spriggs will clash with McEwen and Nicholls will take on Peters on the B side, with the losers going home.

Not backing down

DAVID BOHN of Assinboine Memorial, seeded 13th, is the lowest seed of the final eight teams that made it to Friday night’s playoffs. That might suggest his fellow curlers, whose votes accounted for the seeding, underestimated him.

“We put a lot of work into it this year,” said Bohn, whose team made it to the playoffs last year in Dauphin but lost two extra-end games, back-to-back, to Kerry Burtnyk and Don Spriggs to bounce him out. Now, he says, it’s time to break through to another level and win those tight games at the end.

“We were just curling average at the start of the year and it’s been getting better and better, especially through the MCA (Bonspiel, where he grabbed his berth to the 2008 Manitoba men’s). And fortunately, it looks like the momentum’s still here.

“Of course, it’s going to get tougher. We’re not going to expect the breaks as we go into the final eight. And hopefully we don’t give them back either. We’ve played these guys lots, you know, and it’s not like we haven’t beaten them before. We’ve beaten them lots before.

“But it’s to beat them here. Because they’re here to play.”

Cattle and curling

THE game of curling, it seems, is milking Brandon for all it’s worth this week.

As the 2008 Safeway Manitoba Men’s Curling Championship winds down to Sunday’s final, about 40 teams have arrived in Brandon to start play today in the 40th annual Canadian Cattlemen’s Association Annual National Bonspiel at the Brandon Curling Club.

Eleven teams from Ontario, nine from Alberta, four from Saskatchewan and the rest from Manitoba were walking around the Canad Inns Hotel here Friday, under the same roof where the likes of Jeff Stoughton and Burtnyk are staying as they compete for a provincial title.

Cowboy hats, dark blue jeans and big belt buckles were all the rage as curlers from the various components of Canada’s cattle industry — cattle farmers, packers, truckers, cow-calf producers, feedlot operators, auctioneers — grazed at the hotel’s local saloons.

The cattlemen’s event is being held at the adjacent Brandon Curling Club, not far from the Westman Place facility where the Safeway Championship is being played.

Send-off to Sweden

BARELY a week after Manitoba’s Kaitlyn Lawes and her Pembina Curling Club team won the Canadian Junior Women’s Championship in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., the club has announced it’s hosting a send-off for the foursome in advance of its trip to Sweden.

The get-together is slated for the club on Feb. 23. No other details were provided by the Manitoba Curling Association.

— Chris Cariou