Gauthier edges closer to goal

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This article was published 03/01/2020 (2390 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

He formed a new team and is playing in a new position, but Jacques Gauthier has the same goal.

Gauthier won the junior men’s provincial curling championship the past three years as the third for Team JT Ryan. Last season, the team had their best performance at the national championship. They advanced to the final, where they lost against Team B.C. skipped by Tyler Tardi.

If Gauthier hopes to return to the junior nationals this year, he’ll have to do it without Ryan. His longtime skip, as well as Cole Chandler, the team’s lead in 2018-19, have moved on to men’s competition. Gauthier and Jordan Peters, the former second who has been bumped up to third, were the only junior-eligible players left from the squad.

“Me and JT are the best of friends,” said Gauthier, 21, in a phone interview from this week’s junior provincials in Dauphin. “The first year we played together (2015-16), we went 7-0 in the round robin (at provincials) and then we lost back-to-back games (in the playoffs)… so, it wasn’t a high point to end our season with back-to-back losses. But being 16 or 17 at the time, we both thought we had something special there. I just think, personally, getting along with the guys you play with is so important because it’s such a tight group. You only got three other guys to play with and having everybody on the same page, I think, is what has worked for us in the past and hopefully will continue to.”

With that, Gauthier and Peters knew they had to find two players that would check those boxes. Brandon’s Brayden Payette had expressed interest in joining forces and the team agreed to bring him on as the second. For their new lead, they went with someone who had a familiar last name — Zack Bilawka, whose older brother Brendan helped the team to provincial crowns in 2017 and 2018 as the lead. Brendan has rejoined Ryan this year as second on their men’s team.

“I’ve spent a lot of years going to provincials as a fan and never really got to experience much. Last year was my first time I actually got to play in a under-21 provincial event,” said 18-year-old Zack, the second for Graham Loewen’s rink last year that won bronze at the Canada Winter Games in Red Deer, Alta.

“But I’ve been playing for a lot of years and I’ve got experience at Canada Games and stuff. I’ve known these guys for a long time. It was a bit of an adjustment moving to lead, but it’s coming along and we’re playing real well right now.”

There were, however, some growing pains for Gauthier’s team. Last year under Ryan, they won a junior superspiel in Ottawa. This year, Gauthier and his teammates went 2-3 and failed to reach the qualifying round. Gauthier, the son of three-time national champion Cathy Gauthier, said their struggles in Ottawa were a turning point in their season.

“We kind of just sat down when we had our day off and we just talked about what was going wrong and why we didn’t think we were getting the results on the ice. I think we all just kind of agreed on a lot of things and how we just need to put more time in and throw more. Ever since that, we’ve just played a lot better. Every weekend, I feel like we’ve been a better team than we have the weekend before.”

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With everybody on the team playing new positions, it took a while to get on the same page but it looks like Team Gauthier is coming together and peaking at the right time. They finished the round robin with a 6-0 record and will play Jack Hykaway in today’s semifinal at the Dauphin Recreation Centre.

Gauthier believes he still has something to prove as he’s never won provincials as skip. Bilawka is hungry for his first provincial title. There’s nothing he’d love more than to have the same success his brother had and help the team from Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club continue their dominance.

“It would mean absolutely everything to me. I put in so much work and so much effort into this,” said Bilawka. “Obviously, (my brother) has a very good reputation and resumé in the game. It’s very tough to live up to the last name at this point, but yeah, it would really mean the world to me.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31

Taylor Allen
Reporter

Taylor Allen is a sports reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Taylor was the Vince Leah intern in the Free Press newsroom twice while earning his joint communications degree/diploma at the University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic. He signed on full-time in 2019 and mainly covers the Blue Bombers, curling, and basketball. Read more about Taylor.

Every piece of reporting Taylor 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.