Canadian Juniors the epitome for Forrest

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This article was published 16/01/2010 (6042 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Alex Forrest just couldn’t pass it up.

And we’re not referring to his chance to curl with Jason Gunnlaugson and snatch a free ticket to the Pre-Olympic trials.

Forrest, 20, turned that offer down at the end of last curling season because he didn’t want to give up his last crack at a provincial junior title.

Gunnlaugson made the Olympic trials, but Forrest knew he made the right decision when his Deer Lodge team won the Manitoba junior men’s championship last month at their home club.

Forrest, along with St. Vital’s Breanne Meakin, will represent the province at the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors, which begin today in Sorel-Tracy, Que.

“It makes it a little easier now that this happened,” said Forrest, whose brother Tyler plays lead for Gunnlaugson. “Especially once they won the pre-trials, then I was really thinking we had to win provincials.”

It’s the first trip to the nationals for Forrest and his teammates — Joey Witherspoon, 18, Connor Njegovan, 17, and Mike Neufeld, 19. But the work they’ve put in this season is likely to have them ready.

They picked up $3,250 on the Manitoba Curling Tour after reaching the semifinals at Carberry and Gimli. On the junior circuit, Forrest won at Deer Lodge and lost the final in Gimli.

On a rare weekend off, they were at Deer Lodge throwing rocks.

“From what we saw, we felt like we were working pretty close to the hardest, if not the hardest (of the junior men’s teams in Manitoba),” said Forrest, who is in his final year of junior eligibility.

Equally dedicated has been their coach, Tom Clasper, who is behind the glass for all of their club games at Deer Lodge — even the 9:15 p.m. late draws. Clasper has coached curling since 1980 — he won a Canadian title with Connie Laliberte in 1995 — and is going to his first national junior championship.

“He drives across the city all the time to work with us,” said Forrest, who moved from Carman to Winnipeg after high school. “He’s got lots of experience with the nationals and all kinds of different events like that, so he’ll kind of be able to prepare us for what’s in store.”

Meakin, 19, will be in her third junior women’s nationals in four years, but first as a skip.

She won at lead for Kaitlyn Lawes last year after losing the 2007 final at the same position with Calleen Neufeld.

For Meakin’s teammates — Briane Meilleur, 17, Mariah Mondor, 17, and Krysten Karwacki, 18 — it will be an entirely new experience. Just last month, they were competing in their first junior women’s provincial championship.

“I can’t wait,” said Mondor. “I can’t sleep at night.”

Meakin’s rink is going in with a fair bit of momentum. They dropped just one game in their provincials at Charleswood, and then won the Christmas junior women’s bonspiel the next week.

“We all got along right from the start,” said Meakin, who is coached by her dad Rob, the second on Kerry Burtnyk’s 1995 world champions.

“We stayed positive even when we had bad games and took things from losing. We always learned, no matter what game we played, to take something out of it.”

The winners in Sorel-Tracy will represent Canada at the World Junior Curling Championships in Flims, Switzerland in March.

“That would be an amazing experience,” said Karwacki. “Once in a lifetime for sure.”

sean.grassie@freepress.mb.ca