Around The Rings

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This article was published 23/02/2009 (6378 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Darbyshire delivers with

distinctive flair

VICTORIA — The most distinctively Manitoba curler in this field at the 2009 Scotties Tournament of Hearts is on Team Alberta.

Carolyn Darbyshire, a 1985 Manitoba women’s champion, is curling second for Cheryl Bernard this week, and Darbyshire’s doing it using a classic ‘Manitoba tuck’ delivery that no one on either Manitoba team in this field — Canada’s Jennifer Jones and Manitoba’s Barb Spencer — uses.

Darbyshire is one of the only competitive women’s curlers in the world who uses the toe delivery that has been synonymous with Manitoba’s best men’s curlers — from Barry Fry to Jeff Stoughton — for decades.

And Darbyshire does it with panache, getting into an impossibly low position, her eyes almost at rock level, that no competitive men’s curler can come close to.

Darbyshire explained Sunday that she learned to curl using a flat-foot delivery — like most women learn — but she found it hurt her knee and she switched to the tuck.

“I’ve played that way since I was a kid,” she said.

Darbyshire said it makes the chiropractor that assists the Alberta team cringe every time he watches her tuck.

TSN pulls fast one

on Manitoba viewers

There will have been more than a few Manitobans disappointed with TSN Sunday night.

Network officials told the media on Saturday that they would be broadcasting the Manitoba-Canada game last night. But then Sunday afternoon, they reversed themselves and announced they had opted to show Saskachewan’s Stefanie Lawton taking on Newfoundland’s Heather Strong instead.

Labradoodle dandy

dodges death by coyote

Alberta skip Cheryl Bernard’s trip to the nationals almost went to the dogs last week. Again.

Bernard was out walking her new dog, a Labradoodle, in Calgary last Wednesday when she spotted a coyote. And that brought back some terrible memories.

Two years ago, while she was driving to the 2007 Scotties in Lethbridge, Bernard got word that her Rottweiler, Zeus, had to be euthanized.

The dog had gone into a vet’s clinic earlier that day for a checkup and the vet found something so seriously wrong that the decision was made to put the dog down immediately.

Bernard was crushed and her team limped through the entire 2007 event, disappointing the Alberta crowd and finishing out of the Page playoffs.

So, when Bernard spotted that coyote while she was walking her new dog the other day…

“I’m thinking,” she told the Calgary Herald’s Al Cameron, “I’ll wrestle the coyote to the death if he comes near my dog.”

— Wiecek