The title so nice, he won it twice

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/02/2015 (4116 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On the ice Sunday night, Braden Calvert wasn’t sure whether many Manitoba viewers were watching him curl on TSN or locked on the Super Bowl.

So the Manitoba champion curler simply focused on what was in front of him in the national junior final. He called the shots he needed to call against Saskatchewan’s Jacob Hersikorn — an opponent who, when faced with a tricky take-out, seemed to make them all.

Although the Manitobans hadn’t played for two days, Calvert settled into draw weight as if they’d never left. In the second end, he threw a gentle come-around that slid, silky-smooth, right to the button. That rock would steal one for him, and from there his team felt mostly in control.

Still, the game was tight, tied 6-6 after Hersikorn capitalized on a Calvert miss for a deuce in nine. But Calvert held the hammer coming home, and when the 10th end was done he’d won 8-6 and defended his Canadian junior title. He is only the fifth skip in history to win two nationals in a row.

Calvert also won $10 from third Kyle Kurz by betting on the New England Patriots. So all in all, a pretty good night. “We were all in a lot of shock yesterday, and a lot of excitement,” Calvert said Monday. “It’s pretty special to win it twice.”

To celebrate in Corner Brook, Nfld., that night, the Canadian champions drank chocolate milk (yes, really) in the players lounge with the other teams. That’s about all the time the Deer Lodge rink will get to rest on their laurels — because the next four weeks are going to be a wild ride.

When Calvert, Kurz, second Lucas Van Den Bosch and lead Brendan Wilson landed at the Winnipeg airport Monday morning, red-eyed from a 2:30 a.m. flight, they hadn’t yet slept. They won’t get much time to catch up, as they prepare for the 2015 Safeway provincial men’s curling championship in Brandon. Then, they will fly to Estonia, where the world juniors kick off on Feb. 28.

It’s gonna be a haul. The foursome is “really tired right now,” head coach Tom Clasper said, and they’re also trying to juggle university work. Luckily, for the Safeway at least, the pressure is mostly off. Calvert, after all, is only 19. They’re also juggling the rink a bit: Calvert’s brother Trevor will likely step in at second for some games in Brandon, and Clasper will be in B.C. coaching Team Manitoba in the 2015 Canada Winter Games.

Besides, the real work lies ahead in Estonia. Calvert fell in the bronze-medal game in 2014. But they were a new team last season, and freshly united with Clasper. This time around they are more settled, more tested. They practise six days a week, sometimes multiple times a day; they’re committed, they’ve been consistent and they’re playing awfully well.

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Plus, this is the last year of junior for both Van Den Bosch and Wilson, though Calvert has two more seasons before he ages out, and Kurz still has one. So Estonia is their last shot as a team.

“We definitely want to redeem ourselves,” Calvert said. “We weren’t real pleased with our efforts last year at worlds. We think we could have maybe placed a little higher. That will definitely fuel our fire a little bit to get on the podium this year.”

It’s a long way to Tallinn, Estonia from Carberry, where Calvert grew up and his family owns a cattle farm. (Just last week, his brother named a newborn calf “Tommy” after the team coach.) Once upon a time, he was just a kid there, pretending to be Jeff Stoughton by tossing paper balls around his kitchen. And if you’d told him then that he’d be a two-time Canadian champion and headed to Europe, he laughed, he wouldn’t have believed it.

But then, there are a lot of things about the last two years of his curling career that are hard to believe. “To think we’ve played on TV now,” he said. “That was my big goal, was just to play a game on TV in my life. To know that it came true, and we’re actually winning some games, is pretty special.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.