St. Albert curler Marc Kennedy rocked the house with the defending Alberta champions in their first Grand Slam victory as a team.
The Kevin Koe foursome edged Brad Gushue 4-3 in an extra end in Sunday’s final in the inaugural Tour Challenge, the opening event in the 2015/16 Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling series, for a payout of $24,500 and a berth in the Champions Cup season finale, April 26 to May 1 in Sherwood Park.
“It’s a big confidence boost for us. We kind of needed this,” said Kennedy, the third for Koe, with Brent Laing at second and Ben Hebert at lead. “We’re four guys that have got pretty used to being successful in the game and we didn’t really have a huge win last year. Winning provincials was great, but to win an event where you’ve got McEwan and Gushue and Jacobs and Bottcher, the big guys, we didn’t have that last year and this kind of solidifies that we belong in the top.”
The Tour Challenge in Paradise, Nfld., was the second bonspiel in as many weeks on the World Curling Tour for the Koe rink that finished tied for fifth at 6-5 at the 2015 Tim Hortons Brier in Calgary.
Koe’s draw to the edge of four-foot for the game-winning point against Gushue was the team’s sixth win in a row since losing the first game of the Tour Challenge after going 4-3 as quarter-finalists at the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard.
“It was a big win for our team. It’s our first Slam win so it feels really good,” Kennedy said. “We actually played pretty well all week, especially Kevin. He really got going by about the third game and didn’t miss many shots the rest of the week.”
The Calgary-based lineup was formed last season to compete at the Roar of the Rings Olympic qualifier for the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. With three different rinks they have won a combined eight Briers, five world championships and two Olympic gold medals.
Last season the team ranked fourth on the WCT money list at $86,701. Mike McEwan was No. 1 at $172,500.
“It’s easy to get caught up in that idea of high expectations, what this team was supposed to do and how good we were supposed to be, but we’ve done a good job of avoiding that and just focusing on how we can get a little bit better every time we’re out on the ice. We’ve really taken the approach that we want to be the best we can be in time for when the Olympic trials come around. We have a couple of years here to keep improving so winning the Slam was a big for us. Getting a win can really make a big difference in your confidence and it just gives you momentum. More importantly, even if we would’ve lost, it was nice to see some of the changes we made leading to improvements,” said Kennedy.
The two-time Brier winner, 2008 world champion and 2010 Olympic gold medallist with Kevin Martin, John Morris and Hebert is the team’s fulltime third after throwing third rocks but sweeping skip’s rocks with Laing holding the broom last season.
“I’m in the house fulltime now. We also made a couple of changes to our curling deliveries,” Kennedy said. “Last year was a little bit frustrating but it was also an opportunity for us to see what we can improve on. We had a really good summer of talking and discussing what we can do better and we kind of put that to work in Newfoundland and it worked our for us.”
The slick-shooting southpaw was reluctant to switch from second to third last season.
“I was the one that decided last year that I didn’t want to be in the house. Moving to third was a pretty big change for me and I kind of wanted to share that responsibility with Brent. He knows strategy so well and he’s such a veteran guy that I was hoping that he could bring his experience to the house and I could just worry about making shots,” Kennedy said. “It worked well but we needed to change up the chemistry of the team. Ben and I were kind of like an old married couple down there sweeping and we needed to kind of mix things up for ourselves so I can bring a little bit of energy to Kevin and Ben and Brent work really well together. So far it’s worked good. I’ve been very comfortable calling line.
“To be completely honest with you, Kevin made it really easy this week the way he was curling. I was just the guy giving him a target and staying out of his way. It worked out really well and I think it’s only going to get better.”
A better showing at the Brier would be another step in the right direction towards the Olympic trials. Despite finishing out of the playoffs, Kennedy was a Brier all-star for the sixth time – the St. Albert Curling Club wall of fame inductee in 2011 was a second-team all-star at third after five selections at second in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011 on the first team and 2013 on the second team. Laing and Hebert were also named to the second all-star team.
“As you get older in curling you pretty much see everything. You have great weeks, you have bad weeks and you really do learn. You try not to let the highs get too high and the lows get too low. You chalk it up to a bad week and you learn what you can from it and you move on. If you dwell on it and focus on it, that’s kind of where you get caught up in that negativity and that cycle of losing. We chalked it up for what it was and decided what changes we can make to improve and on to the next year and that’s kind of the focus we’ve taken,” said the svelte-looking Kennedy, 33, who is in the best shape of his athletic career since quarterbacking the St. Albert Storm when he was at Paul Kane High School.
