Walter brings home gold

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This article was published 25/10/2019 (2353 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A 17-year-old East Kildonan curler returns to Canada a world champion.

Meghan Walter, a Grade 12 student at Miles Macdonell Collegiate, recently won gold at the World Mixed Curling Championship in Aberdeen, Scotland, as part of the championship-winning Team Canada.

“I’ve never thought I would associate myself with being a world champion,” Walter wrote in an email to The Herald from Scotland. “But it is a very good feeling and something to be so proud of.”

Team Canada beat Germany on Oct. 19 by a score of 6-5 to bring home the gold medal.Walter, who was a junior women’s curling runner up in 2019, vice-skipped the mixed squad, which included second Brendan Bilawka, lead Sara Oliver, and skip Colin Kurz at the international competition after representing Manitoba and winning the national mixed curling championship at the Fort Rouge Curling Club in November 2018. All four curlers had gotten to know each other through junior competition.

“They had all played mixed before and then asked me about two years ago if I’d like to join the team and I was so ecstatic because I knew how good of curlers they all were and how successful they had all been in juniors,” Walter said. “Creating this team has made us all lifelong friends and I wouldn’t trade anything for it.”

Along with their commitments to their own junior teams, Walter, Oliver, Bilawka and Kurz got together to practise with coach  Jim Waite two or three times a week at the Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club.

“We were fully prepared once the event came around,” said Walter. “We all found the competition to be very well organized for all the players and coaches, and that made our job easy by focusing more on each game at hand and not taking any game lightly.”

Team Canada started the round robin against their eventual opponent in the championship round, beating the German team 6-3. Their strong performance continued as they went unbeaten in round robin play. Canada beat Sweden 9-4 in the first round of playoffs before dispatching Denmark 6-4 in the quarterfinals and Norway 6-5 in the semifinals. With the final win against Germany, Canada went undefeated through 11 matches to win the country’s second consecutive mixed curling world title.

“It’s not everyday you get to represent your country,” Walter, who at 17 is the youngest player to win a mixed curling world championship, said. “And having that opportunity at such a young age has taught me not to take anything for granted and I just want to take all that I’ve learned from my teammates and peers around me and not only apply it to my game of curling, but as well to my everyday life.”

Upon returning home, Walter said she will be making up for lost time with her junior team, which curls out of Elmwood Curling Club, as they prepare for a busy season.

“We are definitely chasing the goal again at provincials and we’ll work our way there by continuing to compete in a couple more (junior) events, as well we will be playing in (women’s) events to challenge ourselves,” she said. “You can only learn from losing and make corrections to your mistakes, and I feel that’s the only way to get better in the game of curling.”

Sheldon Birnie
Community Journalist

Sheldon Birnie is a reporter/photographer for the Free Press Community Review. The author of Missing Like Teeth: An Oral History of Winnipeg Underground Rock (1990-2001), his writing has appeared in journals and online platforms across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. A husband and father of two young children, Sheldon enjoys playing guitar and rec hockey when he can find the time. Email him at sheldon.birnie@freepress.mb.ca Call him at 204-697-7112

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