First time for everything

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This article was published 04/03/2016 (3683 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Curling legend Russ Howard needed three trips to the Canadian men’s curling championship before he finally won his first Brier title.

Jeff Stoughton, the winningest curler in the long and glorious history of Manitoba men’s curling, didn’t win until his second trip. 

Ditto Alberta’s Randy Ferbey, who then went on to win a record six Brier titles.

The point here is that there is only one thing harder to do in all of Canadian men’s curling than winning a Brier — it’s winning a Brier in your first appearance.

All of which brings us to the curious case of Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen, who at the advanced age of 35 will make his first appearance at the Brier here at TD Place Saturday afternoon as the 2016 Canadian men’s curling championship gets underway.

It is a monument to the long, anguished and tortured path that McEwen took to reach this day that he will be making his debut on Canadian curling’s biggest stage at an age many athletes are beginning to think about retirement.

And it also illustrates just how unique this McEwen team is to be having their Brier coming-out party years after they became a household name in this country as one of the most dominating teams on the cash spiel circuit.

That’s the reverse of the order things usually happen in Canadian men’s curling, a world where teams historically haven’t been considered to have really “made it” until they’ve first spent a week curling in the living rooms of Canadians from coast to coast on TSN.

And that raises an interesting question about this McEwen team: Are the television cameras, bright lights and big crowds at this event — all the things that have historically derailed rookie Brier teams — even in play for a McEwen team that’s well schooled in all three from their years on the Grand Slam circuit?

Yes and no, says McEwen, who along with his team — third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld — put on their Manitoba jackets for the first time here on Friday in the individual skills competition that precedes this event.

“The learning curve for us is going to be pretty small, I think. We’re first timers at this event, but we’re also old,” McEwen laughed Friday.

“We’ve got a lot of experience. And we’re battle tested because of all the things we’ve been through as a team. The arena ice, the rocks, the teams we’re playing, the TV — we’re used to all that. 

“And so we really haven’t had an ‘OMG’ moment here yet. It’s almost been a relief as much as exciting for us to finally get here. It’s a weight off our shoulders, for sure.”

McEwen’s path to get here infamously included five losses in the Manitoba final in the last six years before his team finally broke through last month with a win over reigning Canadian junior champion Matt Dunstone in an epic Manitoba final.

How unusual is McEwen’s tortured journey to his first Brier? Well, consider this for some context: McEwen skipped two Manitoba junior champion teams at the Canadian Juniors. In his first trip, in 1998, McEwen lost the semifinal to a brash young punk from Ontario named John Morris. Morris will be playing in his ninth Brier here this weekend as third for Team Canada. 

And then in McEwen’s second trip to the Canadian Juniors, in 2001, he lost the final to some brash young punk from Newfoundland named Brad Gushue. Gushue will be playing in his 13th Brier when he faces McEwen on the opening draw here on Saturday.

Add the Olympic gold medals Gushue and Morris have also won in the intervening years since they were all juniors together with McEwen and the obvious question for McEwen is this: Have their been moments along the way where you’d wondered how different life might have been if you’d curled anywhere but in Stoughton’s Manitoba?

“You can look at it two ways,” replied McEwen. “I could have gone to the Brier a million times for some province that I won’t name because they’ll get mad at me. And I could have learned from those experiences and built my team that way.

“Or the other way is the way we did it — getting battle-tested in Manitoba just because of all the heartache over the years and how tough it was to get past Stoughton and then his former teammates (Rob Fowler and Reid Carruthers).

“We built our armour on tour and blowing our brains out in the Manitoba provincials every year. And I don’t think I’d trade that experience for anything now that I’ve got this bison on my back.”

McEwen will need to draw on every last bit of that experience over the coming nine days at a Brier that some are calling the deepest field ever assembled, boasting 16 previous Brier winners, 13 former world champions, nine Olympic gold-medallists and a mind-boggling 304 purple hearts among the field.

It is, in other words, the perfect Brier debut for a McEwen team that, let’s face it, has never done anything the easy way.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek