Building a new success story

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This article was published 24/10/2010 (5762 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The outpouring of support continues to be overwhelming.

Six months after she was fired as third for the Jennifer Jones curling team, the three-time Canadian champion, Cathy Overton-Clapham still gets emotional as she describes how the support from other players and fans continues unabated.

“The support has been amazing — from everyone,” Overton-Clapham said Saturday between games at the $60,000 Manitoba Lotteries Womens Curling Classic at the Fort Rouge Curling Club. “And at times, it is overwhelming — I’m not going to lie.

“Here, and in Calgary as well, there have been all these people coming up and saying nice things… And it can be a little emotional at times, especially when you see people you haven’t seen since it happened. But it’s nice to have the support and I’m just trying to move on.”

It is going to be impossible to replace the situation she had with Jones — the most dominant women’s team in the country for the past five years and winners of everything except an Olympic medal.

But Overton-Clapham does not know winter without curling, so she soldiers on with a new team that is making its local debut this weekend. With junior prodigy Breanne Meakin at third and a hard-working — and inseparable — front-end in Leslie Wilson and Raunora Westcott, Overton-Clapham is starting all over again this winter.

“It’s a different challenge,” she says, “but it’s one we’re all up for.”

The foursome is playing in their second bonspiel together this weekend. They won a couple of games in their first effort — a Slam event in Calgary earlier this month — but didn’t qualify for the playoffs.

This weekend, they got off to a 2-0 start before they got drilled 7-2 by Winnipeg’s Chelsea Carey in an A-side semifinal Saturday afternoon, bouncing them to the B-side of the triple-knockout event.

The road to success isn’t easy and it won’t happen quickly, but no one expected otherwise.

“Obviously, there’s a lot of things to get used to on any new team,” says Wilson, “But Cathy’s been to so many events and knows so many things, I just really see this as an oppportunity to learn this year.”

Wilson, who finished third among seconds in shooting percentage at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., last February as second for Jill Thurston, left Thurston’s team after the skip fired Westcott at the end of last season.

That creates the bizarre situation where the front-end of the defending Manitoba champion is playing this winter with the third from the defending Canadian champion. But so it goes for Wilson and Westcott, who have been what Wilson describes as a “team within a team” together for nine seasons.

“We communicate really well amongst ourselves and that’s one thing that makes a change like this easier,” she explains.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

bonspiel update

Winnipeg’s Shauna Streich and Brette Richards and American Patti Lank were the first teams eliminated from the Manitoba Lotteries Women’s Curling Classic at the Fort Rouge Curling Club on Saturday.

All three teams were retired in three consecutive losses from the 32-team event.

Winnipeg’s Chelsea Carey, on the other hand, won three in a row to advance to an A-side qualifier Saturday night against Regina’s Amber Holland. Alberta’s Renee Sonnenberg was playing B.C.’s Kelly Scott in the other A-side qualifier.

In Portage at the Canad Inns Prairie Classic, Winnipeg’s Peter Nicholls was playing Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen in one A-side qualifier Saturday night while Ontario’s Glenn Howard was playing China’s Xiaoming Xu in the other A-side qualifier.

B.C.’s Jeff Richard and American John Benton had already been eliminated by Saturday evening.