Stoughton OK with being forced to wear Roughrider green

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This article was published 06/04/2011 (5654 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

REGINA — They wore green as part of a promotion here at the World Men’s Curling Championship on Tuesday.

But Winnipeg’s Jeff Stoughton and his teammates didn’t want anyone getting the idea that meant they were now fans of the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

“Never,” Stoughton responded. “But it’s Green Day apparently. So we’re OK with that. It was a lot of fun.”

The promotion encouraged fans at the Brandt Centre to wear their Roughriders merchandise to the arena and saw Team Canada outfitted with green jackets, over top their regular uniforms, to wear as they were piped in before the game.

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Russ Howard says he is delighted that his daughter, Ashley, is about to become Winnipeg’s newest resident and competitive curler.

The Free Press revealed Tuesday Ashley Howard is moving to Winnipeg to curl full-time next season on a new team being assembled by Cathy Overton-Clapham. Russ Howard — who is here doing broadcast duties for TSN — said he’s thrilled for his little girl.

“It’s awesome, it’s fantastic,” Howard said. “I’m a little biased but I think my daughter is a really good player. And, as I found after I left Ontario and Wayne Middaugh, Peter Corner and Glenn Howard, it was hard for me to find a similar team in New Brunswick.

“So now she has a chance to spread her wings and play at the highest level. And if you’re a Howard in curling, that’s what you want to do. It was entirely up to her and I had nothing to do with it. But if I could pick a curler that Ashley could mentor with, it would definitely be Cathy Overton-Clapham. Bar none.”

Ashley Howard will be joining Breanne Meakin and Jenna Loder on a new squad with Overton-Clapham.

In a side note, Overton-Clapham played her former Team Canada teammates at a bonspiel in Victoria last week. She was playing on a squad that included Alberta’s Lori Olson, former Scottish women’s champion Eve Muirhead and Meakin.

Jones won 5-3 in what was only the second meeting of the two teammates since they parted ways last spring. Overton-Clapham, of course, won the other matchup, a highly-publicized affair during February’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Charlottetown.

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The roller-coaster ride the Norwegians have been on here this week continued Tuesday as the 2010 Olympic silver medallists were beaten 7-4 by Switzerland’s Christof Schwaller in the morning draw before grinding out a gritty 7-6 win over the Americans in the afternoon draw.

The split sends skip Thomas Ulsrud into today with a 3-4 record and needing to win all four of their remaining round-robin games to have much of a chance of seeing the playoffs.

The Norwegians haven’t been curling badly — they’re third in team percentage at 83 per cent — and Ulsrud was unsure what to make of his team’s up and down performance here.

“I don’t know what the problem is. We have to figure it out. Maybe we’re just playing stupid or bad tactics. But I don’t think that either because we’re playing the same way as we always did. We just can’t get the breaks.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca