Calvert’s quest will be long and arduous

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This article was published 16/01/2016 (3789 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Braden Calvert knows how to do busy.

So a potential weekend of near non-stop curling isn’t going to throw any wrenches into the two-time Canadian junior champion’s game.

Calvert and his new junior rink are all-in at the Manitoba Open this weekend, gunning for one of three available berths in the provincial men’s championship (now named the Viterra Championship).

“Oh, it will be (a grind),” Calvert said Friday after his first two outings in the annual bonspiel. We’ll embrace that. You can usually only lose one game if you’re going to get a (provincial) spot, so we’re on our last life now. You’ve probably got to win six or seven in a row now to get our spot.”

His Manitoba Open featured some erratic play in the early going.

In Thursday night’s opener at Assiniboine against Wisconsin’s Scott Masloroff, Calvert was down 5-0 after two ends but roared back to win 8-5.

“Once you figure out the ice… it’s a lot different when you don’t have a pre-game practice and then you throw a rock and it curls two feet more than you think it will,” Calvert grinned. “That’s tough. But once we got the handle on things, we were pretty smooth sailing.”

There was some smooth sailing early Friday against Granite’s Trevor Loreth, but Loreth rallied with a deuce in the seventh end and stole the eighth to win 6-5 at Deer Lodge, Calvert’s home club.

Friday afternoon, Calvert continued the push. Dropping to the Free Press event, he stopped Fort Rouge’s Andrew Wickman 7-5 in a game at St. Vital.

The team is in the Manitoba Open only because it didn’t find a provincials berth in the zone playdowns.

“In the zones, which is how we got in last year, we had some unfortunate breaks there, a couple of picks really cost us, but that’s the way it goes, and now we’re grinding it out in the MCA,” Calvert said. “But this MCA, it’s not very easy. There are so many teams.

“And a lot of it is luck of the draw. Look at today, we’re against Trevor almost right off the bat, whereas another team might have an easy route and get through.

“There’s a little bit of luck for getting a spot from this, but at the same time, if you can play well, you should get your spot.”

He sounded anything but worried about that grind, and probably with good reason.

Last year, his amazing success included his Canadian junior victory in Newfoundland and Labrador, after which he and his team jumped on a plane back to Winnipeg, then scurried out to Brandon to start the provincial men’s event. There, Calvert’s jet-lagged rink sailed through the preliminaries to make the playoff round.

The team, though, is half-new this year.

With second Lucas Van Den Bosch and lead Brendan Wilson graduating out of junior, Connor McIntyre is the team’s new second and Colin Kurz is the new lead joining Calvert and third Kyle Kurz.

“It’s been fun, a new challenge,” Calvert, a Carberry native, said. “We’ve been trying to get better as the year’s gone on.

“I wouldn’t say there’s been a huge adjustment. I’m a pretty easygoing guy, same with Kyle, so we’re easy to play with that way.”

The team has opted for a busy schedule, trying to establish some new chemistry.

“We’ve been following the MCT tour around in Manitoba,” Calvert said. “We went to Blaine, Minn., at the start of the year, then Brandon, the same thing. We travelled to Ottawa to an invite-only junior spiel, and other than that, we’ve been playing lots of men’s events around Manitoba.

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“It’s been a good season so far.”

At the Manitoba junior last week, Calvert reached the final four but was unable to defend the crown, won by Matt Dunstone.

The Calvert rink is combining a competitive schedule with a heavy school schedule.

“My last year, this year, has been a lot busier,” said the University of Manitoba agriculture student. “We maybe haven’t thrown quite as many practices together just because of school. All four of us have some pretty hefty schedules. But we make it work.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca