Carruthers rink has history on its side

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This article was published 30/11/2016 (3498 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon — Reid Carruthers has fond memories from the last time he curled at Westman Place, and the Winnipeg skip would like nothing more than to have the spotlight shine on him and his team Sunday evening.

Carruthers, third Braeden Moskowy, second Derek Samagalski and lead Colin Hodgson, beat Brandon product Mike McEwen 5-3 in the 2015 Safeway Championship (now Viterra Championship) final to earn a ticket to the Tim Hortons Brier.

“I remember there being a solid crowd and us coming out on top in a hard-fought battle,” Carruthers said. “I’m hoping to bring back some more memories throughout the week here.”

This week, the 31-year-old and his West St. Paul Curling Club crew is back in the Wheat City in search of a bigger victory.

The Home Hardware Canada Cup of Curling, featuring 14 of the top men’s and women’s teams in the country, begins today and runs until Sunday.

It’s the first time the event has been played in Manitoba since it debuted in 2003 in Kamloops, B.C., and is the first Curling Canada event Brandon has hosted since the 2002 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. And there is plenty on the line.

The winning teams will earn a berth into the 2017 Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings Canadian Curling Trials field in Ottawa, a spot in the 2017 World Financial Group Continental Cup in Las Vegas and $14,000.

“This time the field is a little different (than the 2015 provincials),” Carruthers said. “I think the seven best teams are here, so it’s going to be a little tougher, but I’m hoping to have some fun.”

Carruthers threw second stones for Jeff Stoughton when they won the 2012 Canada Cup, and was on the MTS Centre ice for the 2013 Olympic trials. He’s hungry to replicate those feats.

“That was the goal when we first put this team together: to build for a four-year period and try to get into the trials and win them, not just get there,” he said. “For us, this would be one of the opportunities to earn a spot there. It would be nice and it would take the stress off because we wouldn’t have to worry about points and everything else the rest of the year, we could just focus on our provincials, but, at the same time, we’ve worked hard, we’ve had good results.

“As long as we keep doing what we are doing we are going to earn our spot.”

It’s not going to be easy, as all seven teams on the men’s side, including defending Canada Cup and reigning national and world champion Kevin Koe of Edmonton — who has already secured his berth to the trials — are ranked in the top 10 of the World Curling Tour’s money list.

Carruthers sits third and has reached the semifinals in four of his last five events, including a win at the Canad Inns Men’s Classic last month in Portage la Prairie.

With the likes of McEwen, 2014 Olympic gold medallist Brad Jacobs, Saskatoon’s Steve Laycock, John Epping of Toronto and Brad Gushue — with Mark Nichols skipping in place of the injured St. John’s skip — in the field, Samagalski expects it to be a fight all week.

“You look at the fields here, every game is going to be a battle,” he said. “We’re just going to take one game at a time and have some fun and, hopefully, at the end of Sunday we’re standing at the podium on top.”

Unlike Carruthers, Chelsea Carey and her Calgary foursome arrive in the Wheat City searching for the form that led to them winning the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in February in Grande Prairie, Alta.

“This is a big one in a number of ways,” Carey said. “We just want to put some good games together and come out and play well.”

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Carey, who is originally from Winnipeg and earned a bronze medal skipping Manitoba at the 2014 Scotties, opened the WCT season with a victory at the Hokkaido Bank Curling Classic in northern Japan in August.

However, in the six WCT events her team has entered since, the best result Carey has mustered is reaching three quarter-finals.

Carey admitted it’s a been a season of highs and lows, but there’s no better time to flex her muscles than against the country’s top women’s teams, including two-time Canadian champion Rachel Homan of Ottawa and Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones, a five-time national and one-time world champion.

Winnipegger Kerri Einarson, who won the Manitoba Scotties last January, is also in the seven-team women’s field, as are Edmontonians Val Sweeting and Kelsey Rocque, and Tracy Fleury of Sudbury, Ont.

— Brandon Sun