Dan Holowaychuk is a Canadian champion for the first time since the Ferbey Four era.
The St. Albert Curling Club wall of fame member is the second for skip Wade White, third Barry Chwedoruk and lead George White, winners of the Everest Canadian Seniors Curling Championship in Fredericton, N.B.
“I’ve won some Canadians with the Ferbey team but with my own team it’s a little special,” said Holowaychuk, the backbone of the Ferbey Four as the alternate for the four-time Brier champions and three-time world gold medallists.
The provincial reps at the senior (50-plus) nationals will carry the Team Canada banner into the 2018 worlds at a location to be determined after surviving an uphill climb in last Saturday’s slippery gold-medal final against Howard Rajala of Team Ontario.
“I didn’t really think we were going to win that game until their last rock stopped,” Holowaychuk said of the 7-6 extra-end decision at Willie O’Ree Place. “We were on pins and needles.”
Rajala, who curled at the 1999 Brier with Ontario champion Rich Moffatt, had to pull off a difficult last shot on “the straight side of the ice,” according to Holowaychuk, and the attempt was unsuccessful.
“Before the rock even hit the house Wade had his hands in the air. He knew it wasn’t going to curl because I tried some taps earlier in the end and we couldn’t get them to move,” Holowaychuk said. “The emotion of seeing Wade’s face at the end was priceless to me.”
White was lying one with Rajala, the 2013 senior national finalist, gunning for the victory.
“They basically had about four or five around the button and with Wade’s (shots) we had to start wicking in off some stuff and banging into a pile,” Holowaychuk said. “They left us a slight opening with Wade’s last one. If they had maybe thrown a guard I don’t know what we would’ve done. They tried to hit and roll into the pile one more time and they kind of stayed there and we used that to come off of. There was a gap between a couple of rocks and we kind of wicked off and jammed into those two and we bit more of the button than what they had there.
“There were some guards up front and I think they could see a few inches of that rock (and) they threw a quiet hit, a little tap on it, and once again we got it in that straight spot.”
The winning point marked only the second lead of the final for White after starting out with one in two with the hammer.
“We were chasing them pretty much the whole game,” Holowaychuk said of Rajala, Moffatt at third and the front end of Chris Fulton Paul Madden of the Rideau Curling Club of Ottawa.
White matched Rajala’s three-spot in third while actually going for a deuce with the hammer in six on a bing-bang play to knot it at four.
“When the smoke cleared I turned around and looked and there was a lot of blue in the house and we almost got four and nobody even thought that was even there so the three was a little surprise since we were playing the double for two,” Holowaychuk said. “After we got our three I missed a couple of shots in seven but we had a chance to get out of that with a potential triple on Wade’s last one and maybe they could blank the end. We hit it a little skinny and we got a double but gave them a shot for two and then in eight we get the deuce.”
The outcome of the final was the seventh consecutive win at nationals and the second against Rajala, also by the same score in the championship pool. A steal of two in six made it 7-3 for White.
White finished 9-3 overall at the six-day, 14-team nationals after going 3-3 in pool B for a five-way tie for second spot.
“When you don’t think you’re going to win something and then you win it in the end it’s even better than bowling over everyone and running away with every game,” Holowaychuk said. “It’s very rewarding.”
In the playoffs, No. 2 White defeated No. 3 Robert Maclean (7-5) of Hudson, Quebec 10-3 and No. 4 Rajala (7-5) knocked off No. 1 Terry Odishaw (11-1) of Moncton, N.B. 8-5.
Odishaw edged Mclean 6-5 for the bronze.
White needed assistance to advance into the championship pool through the tie-breaker system.
“We left something in somebody else’s hands to take care of it for us,” Holowaychuk said. “We knew we were in a tough pool to start and our goal is always to make playoffs, it doesn’t matter where, and we did. We just snuck into it.
“We’ve just been sneaking into everything and things seen to happen at the very end for us.”
At northerns in January at the Ottewell, last year’s provincial finalists escaped from an 0-2 start by running the table in the C event despite trailing 4-0 after five ends by cracking a five-ender in six, en route to the first of six wins in C.
A five-game winning streak after losing twice in the opening four games at provincials in February at the Dawson Creek Curling Club was capped off with a 3-2 decision over Kurt Balderston as White didn’t have to throw the hammer in the last end.
“It was a grind,” Holowaychuk said of the road to the national championship for the Saville Centre rink. “There were so many times that we had one foot out the door. Right from the starting stage we dug a hole at every level and then just got on a roll and battled to sneak it out at the end.
“We’re streaky at the end. I guess we’ve got to get our backs to the wall and look back and say, ‘This is it. There is nothing left.’”
Holowaychuk, 54, and White were competing at their second senior nationals since collecting bronze in 2013 with St. Albert’s Doug McLennan at third and lead George Parsons at Summerside, P.E.I.
“In P.E.I. the ice was very tricky (at the Silver Fox Curling & Yacht Club). We were 9-2 in the round robin but we could’ve been very easily 5-5. We came back from five-point deficits and we lost games that we were up a bunch,” Holowaychuk said. “This time we played in the arena and it was super fast but we also played in the (Capital Winter) club, which was quick but very, very tricky, kind of a lot like the P.E.I. stuff.
“Going back and forth (for games at two locations) made it tough but when we got into the arena we kind of liked that.”
White also compiled a 9-3 record in 2013.
“This field was probably a little bit tougher than the first time we went. Everybody is pretty equal. There are a lot of teams that could’ve won it,” said Holowaychuk, a six-time President’s Cup men’s playoff champion at the St. Albert Curling Club and the winning skip at the 1989 Edmonton and area Tournament of Champions.
