Manitoba brigade launching Maritimes invasion to capture Olympic curling trial berths

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This article was published 03/11/2017 (3216 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Walk proudly, Manitoba curling fans — a quarter of the field for next week’s Road to the Roar Canadian Olympic pre-trials hails from these parts.

A contingent of seven local teams join 21 others from across the country in Summerside, P.E.I., all in hot pursuit of the final four spots (two in each of the men’s and women’s playdowns) for the national trials in Ottawa next month.

Kerri Einarson of East St. Paul and three teams from Winnipeg — Briane Meilleur of Fort Rouge, Darcy Robertson of Assiniboine Memorial and Shannon Birchard of Thistle — compete in the women’s draw of the weeklong event that begins Monday. Meanwhile, three men’s teams from the venerable Granite Curling Club, skipped by Jason Gunnlaugson, William Lyburn and Pat Simmons, are also bound for the second-largest city of the country’s smallest province.

They join a rock-solid list of competitive teams with plenty of national and international success. Squads earned their way to Summerside by way of their Canadian Team Ranking System point totals, accumulated in bonspiels and provincial and national championships over the past couple of curling seasons.

Teams that clinch spots qualify for the trials, Dec. 2-10 in the nation’s capital. Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones, the 2014 Olympic gold medallist, and Michelle Englot, also of Winnipeg, have already qualified, as have Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen and Reid Carruthers.

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Knocking off the reigning Olympic champion not once, but twice in the same event would give any team a rush. Birchard says it was like being injected with a supercharged confidence serum.

The 23-year-old skip, who plays with third Nicole Sigvaldason, second Sheyna Andries and lead Mariah Mondor, downed Jones in a playoff qualifier in a late-September bonspiel in Saskatoon and then defeated the five-time national champion in the rematch a day later.

“That was our third event of the season, still very early, and it was a huge confidence boost,” Birchard admits. “(Jones) is obviously someone that we’ve all looked up to throughout our curling careers, so to best her twice in an event is really quite something.

“Definitely, our confidence has increased since then. We’ve put a lot of effort into upping our game, whether it be fitness-wise, mentally and practising more as a team. Our commitment level is really high.”

Birchard’s crew found instant chemistry when it was first assembled in 2013. The skip and lead had won a Manitoba junior women’s title the previous season but needed to add a couple of players that fall when Selena Kaatz and Kristin MacCuish, who now play for Einarson, aged out. Sigvaldason and Andries came aboard to rave reviews, and the ’13 provincial crown went back to Birchard.

Unfortunately, the Manitobans lost the Canadian final — the second straight for Birchard, who, at the time, characterized the defeat as “heartbreaking.” She remained in juniors while the others moved on to women’s play, but the tight-knit group was back together in time for the 2014-15 competitive women’s season. Since that time, they’ve made the playoffs of the provincials twice in three years but are still seeking their first-ever Scotties title.

Those ups and downs created a bond that’s simply unbreakable.

“What’s special about our team is we’re friends first, teammates second. So, we have some really great team chemistry. We know what works and what doesn’t,” she says. “We’ve really grown as a team and you can really track our progress over the years.”

Birchard’s team will be one of the youngest foursomes in the pre-trials field. They received the final invitation in late May after Curling Canada expanded the women’s and men’s fields from 12 to 14. Because the race was so tight for the last few spots, a decision was made to add teams rather than force some into tiebreaker scenarios. That negated an all-or-nothing showdown between Meilleur and Karla Thompson of Kamloops, B.C., while Birchard was also given a berth.

Meilleur is supported by third Breanne Knapp, second Janelle Vachon and lead Sarah Neufeld. Meilleur, Robertson and Einarson will all knock heads in round-robin play in Pool D, while Birchard won’t face any familiar foes from Manitoba in Pool C until, possibly, the weekend playoffs.

Einarson, with Kaatz at third, second Liz Fyfe and MacCuish at lead, slides into the pre-trials as one of the sharpest women’s squad in Canada. Ranked ninth on the WCT order of merit, the 2016 provincial Scotties champion, prevailed at a Slam event in Regina and another bonspiel in Winnipeg in September, lost a semifinal of another tour event in Portage two weeks ago and was defeated by Jennifer Jones in the final of the Masters of Curling, another Slam ‘spiel, last Sunday in Lloydminster, Alta.

While Einarson, Meilleur and Birchard will have future opportunities to vie for an Olympic spot, it’s likely Darcy Robertson’s last chance to travel that road. Now 52, the former Canadian junior champion and three-time Manitoba Scotties winner (1986, 2003, 2009) who lost the 2017 provincial final to Michelle Englot in late January, says next week will, indeed, be special.

“Personally, I have always loved curling and it’s been a passion of mine. It just feels great to be back at this level again, and to be able to play in something to possibly get an Olympic spot,” Robertson says. “It makes me feel like I can still do it. It’s nice to have some success at this time in my career.”

When third Karen Klein joined the team three years ago, things just clicked, says the veteran skipper, flanked by the front-end duo of Vanessa Foster at second and Theresa Cannon at lead.

“We had a team meeting when Karen joined us and committed to spending more time on the game. We did have the Olympic trials on our minds, of course, everybody does,” Robertson adds.

“We’ve worked with a sports psychologist and we’ve talked about how to prepare for (Summerside) and handle the pressure, and just the excitement of the whole event. We’re going to go and just leave it all out there, that’s our goal.”

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They’re four guys who got swept away by their former teams at the conclusion of the 2016-17 curling season.

Collectively, Gunnlaugson, Alex Forrest, Ian McMillan and Connor Njegovan transformed unfortunate sets of circumstances into a really big break.

The quartet, ranked 12th on the World Curling Tour men’s order of merit, earned enough CTRS points the past few seasons to nail down an invitation to Summerside. Gunnlaugson, 33, wasn’t even at the helm when that was happening — he was racking up points with another team, entirely. That’s the crew of Colton Lott, Kyle Doering and Rob Gordon that Simmons now skips.

Not long after the Manitoba men’s championship in Portage la Prairie, Gunnlaugson’s teammates dropped him and enlisted the veteran Saskatchewan skip, a two-time Brier champion, to take over. Residency rules adopted in 2015 by Curling Canada allows for a team to have one out-of-province player, and those rules apply to the upcoming pre-trials and trials.

Timing, as they say, is everything. When another Winnipeg skip, two-time Canadian junior champion Matt Dunstone, bolted from his team to play second for Steven Laycock of Saskatoon, his abandoned trio — Forrest, McMillan and Njegovan — wisely locked up the talented free agent.

“I got cut and it all started from there. They decided to go in a different direction. But when Matt left his team, it was just an unbelievable opportunity for me,” says Gunnlaugson. “It was a pretty awesome fit in a bad situation. We’re the four guys who kind of got left in the lurch, and together we’ve turned it into something that’s been, so far, pretty special.”

In the end, Gunnlaugson points out, everybody got what they wanted. Dunstone is now on a team with a trials spot already secured, while he and Simmons linked with teams guaranteed to play at the pre-trials.

“You have to be your own GM, which is awkward but good in a way. It’s unique with curling. But you quickly learn there’s no point holding a grudge because you’re likely to play with the same people again later,” Gunnlaugson says.

The team has won a pair of bonspiels on the circuit this fall, claiming the Grand Slam of Curling Tour Challenge (Tier 2) title in early September in Regina with a victory over the Lyburn team of third Richard Daneault, second Jared Kolomaya and lead Brayden Zawada, and the Mother Club Fall Classic in Winnipeg two weeks later with triumph over the Simmons band.

Last weekend, they qualified for the playoffs in Lloydminster but fell to Kevin Koe of Edmonton in the quarter-finals.

Gunnlaugson made headlines seven years ago when he and two other Winnipeggers, Tyler Forrest and Justin Richter, were recruited by Russia to curl with a pair of Russian players, forming a fully funded curling team. So, they packed up their brooms and headed to Moscow in the spring of 2010 in an attempt to qualify for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

But by late November they were effectively fired. Despite winning the Russian championship and about to compete in the European championship, the Russians suddenly said citizenship would be delayed at least three months and the contract was voided.

Nicknamed Gunner, he had a second shot at making it to the Olympics. Resuming his competitive career on Canadian ice, he joined forces with Jim Cotter out west in 2012 and, a year later, was the alternate for the John Morris foursome — with Cotter throwing final stones. But they lost the Olympic trials final to Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., who would go on to take gold in Sochi.

“Tied with five ends to go (against Jacobs) to go to the Olympics. It was getting pretty exciting,” he recalls, with a laugh. “I’ve definitely gotten a lot of different experiences — and a lot of great experiences — through curling. It’s been pretty neat. But it’s been nice to settle down the last couple of years back in Manitoba and playing close to home.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell