MCA Bonspiel prep smooth

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This article was published 28/01/2010 (5971 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It was so quiet at the Manitoba Curling Association Bonspiel headquarters Wednesday morning you could have heard a corn-broom straw drop.

Draw master Mel Marsh wasn’t fooled. "It’s only Wednesday," he quipped as he went over the draw that begins today at 6 p.m. at every curling rink in the city.

An earlier cut-off date for entries was installed this year to help make Marsh’s labours a little easier.

Still, the 20-year veteran of draws isn’t impressed. "It’s never made easier," he said. "It’s always a chore each year."

The rationale of the early deadline, said Shane Ray, Curl Manitoba’s executive director, was to eliminate the last-minute hassle of plugging gaps in the draw with late entries.

"We did have a cut-off date, but we didn’t get to our 416 rinks," said Marsh, adding they only got to 406, which is not a perfect draw.

In order to fix the gap, Marsh said, "we will have 10 MCA teams (placed in the draw) which will be byes whenever a team comes up against those MCA teams."

Back at the MCA office, a more optimistic Ray said things were running well. "Absolutely. We’re running the world’s largest, and what we believe to be oldest bonspiel in the world. There’s always little things, like photocopies of this, and the last-minute things that you suddenly remember you have to do."

Ray said things were going so smoothly that on Sunday, Marsh told him: "Things are going way too smooth. It almost scares me."

A couple of problems have been solved with this year’s format. "Anybody who is playing back-to-back games this year will play them at the same club," Marsh said, adding that teams will be informed while they are on the ice playing their first game. Previously, teams had almost no time to travel across town to try making it to their next game.

"Also, we are only using curling clubs within the city," Marsh added. "We count West St. Paul and East St. Paul as being in the city, because they are just across the Perimeter."

Stonewall Curling Club won’t be used this year, eliminating the need for highway travel, sometimes in bad weather conditions.

One of the greatest things about playing in the MCA Bonspiel is that anyone, regardless of skill, could draw a game with a world champion such as Kerry Burtnyk (1995) and Jeff Stoughton (1996) and claim bragging rights over their close encounter with greatness. On the other hand, there is nothing to say Burtnyk and Stoughton couldn’t face off in the opening draw, either.

"We don’t seed the teams," Marsh said. "The computer does all the matching of teams. If Burtnyk and Stoughton happen to play each other in the first draw, so be it. It’s a bonspiel, and that’s just the way the cookie crumbles."

After 20 years of draw-making, from the bonspiel’s 100th anniversary in 1988 with 12,070 teams, to this year’s 122nd rock fest with only 406, Marsh has no intention of stepping down in the near future. He does, however, breathe a sigh of relief when it’s over.

"That’s Monday night around 9 p.m., when the last rocks are thrown," he said. "Then we start all over again for next year.

"I really enjoy it, but sometimes you feel like you want to take a break. Once my wife retires or something like that, maybe we’ll go down south and I won’t be available. We’ll see."

allan.besson@freepress.mb.ca

The basics

Draws: 20.

Events: 13

Safeway Select berths at stake: Five

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Headquarters: Canad Inns Polo Park

Headquarters phone: 784-5100

Guaranteed games: Six

Possible games: 10; 12 counting playoffs

Eliminations begin: Draws 13-20