St. Albert curler Doug McLennan delivered a double at provincials.
McLennan celebrated his second seniors (50-plus) championship in three years as the Glen Hansen rink knocked off Mark Johnson 7-6 in Sunday’s final at Medicine Hat.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time and competitively for a long time,” said the 57-year-old McLennan. “Anybody can win one but you’re kind of legit when you win two so this one is really nice. At my age how many more am I going to get?”
The Hansen foursome, with George Parsons and Don Bartlett as the front-end, will represent Alberta at the Canadian Seniors Curling Championships, March 21 to 28 at the Thistle.
“Being at home is fabulous,” McLennan said of the oldest curling club in Edmonton hosting nationals. “A lot of times you hear guys say there is a little more pressure because obviously you’re carrying the home colours but I look at it as the exact opposite. We’re going to have lots of people hanging around rooting for us that we didn’t have when we were 5,000 miles or whatever it was away from home (for provincials) so that is going to be pretty exciting.
“Obviously you want to do well because Alberta is one of the provinces expected to do well and there is nothing wrong having that little bit of extra pressure. If we play like we have, and it was a really good field at provincials, we’ll be OK.”
At the 2013 nationals at Summerside, P.E.I., McLennan was the third rocker on the Alberta rink with skip Wade White, second Dan Holowaychuk of St. Albert and Parsons at lead that finished 9-3 overall as bronze medallists.
“All across the board we have experience so I don’t think anything is going to surprise us,” McLennan said. “Glen obviously has national experience being in mixed this year (as the Alberta rep). Donnie Bartlett has tons of experience and for George and I it’s our second go at it.”
That experience spilled onto the ice at provincials as the northern Alberta A-event qualifiers finished 7-2 overall.
“There was a lot of input from Donnie Bartlett. He’s playing lead with a wealth of experience with Briers so he was a real good asset. He wouldn’t let us get goofy. He wouldn’t let us go for the throw if he thought there was any danger because he’s seen every shot before and we thought we’ve seen them all too so that was a little bit of a different dynamic,” McLennan said.
“George is a very strong sweeper, a good thrower and a great guy to have on the squad. He might be the rabbit’s foot. And when Glen needed to play well he played well. He had a few ups and downs but in the final he was real good and that’s what your skip has to be.”
Hansen, who lives in Hinton, stole two in the eighth end in the 4-3 semifinal win over Brad Hannah, of the Saville Centre, and in the final against the defending champion opened the scoring with a steal of four in the fourth end.
“It was actually a pretty bizarre game. (Johnson) had the hammer because he finished first. He blanked the first three ends and when I went to throw in four they had four of their stones in the rings and I made a little hit and roll. They flashed then I made a double. They jammed and the next thing I know we’re laying four. Mark throws his last one a little hot and just sort of chips off one on the top of the four foot and rolls through the rings and it’s a steal four at the midway point,” McLennan explained. “We kind of got a little lazy in five and he got a three and then coming back in six we got three so now we’re four up playing seven and we weren’t taking any chances. He would get something around the corner and we just kept peeling stuff off. We conceded a deuce and stayed away from anything bigger than that.”
The last round-robin game saw the Grande Prairie/Edmonton quartet of Johnson, third Kurt Balderston, second Rob Bucholz and lead Del Shaughnessy, representing the Peace Curling Association, defeat Hansen 8-6 as both teams finished on top of the leaderboard with Hannah at 5-2.
“He won the draw to the button for the hammer and got a deuce and we just couldn’t catch him,” McLennan said. “He was curling with Balderston and all of these guys so it was kind of a star studded team we played against.”
The seniors’ playdowns marked the first time all four members of the Hansen rink curled together.
“It really all started with a phone call in August,” said McLennan, who skipped his Thursday mixed team to seven President’s Cups in eight years in the St. Albert playoffs and won the 2010 Edmonton and area Tournament of Champions.
The 2015 Canadian seniors’ champion will advance to worlds next year at a location to be determined. This year’s worlds are in Sochi, Russia.
