The Wade White rink continues to sweep away the competition as the first senior men’s foursome to three-peat in Alberta.
The winners of the 3 Son's Integra Tire Auto Centre bonspiel at St. Albert Curling Club is also 5-2 in the Men’s Super League at Saville Community Sports Centre.
“We’re all ailing a little bit here. The start of this year was really tough. It was pretty painful. I’ll be playing with a stick pretty soon before you know it,” said the 57-year-old Dan Holowaychuk of St. Albert and the second for the 2017 Canadian champions, 2018 world gold medallists and 2019 Canadian bronze medallists with White as the skip, third Barry Chwedoruk and lead George White.
The senior (50-plus) provincial champions slid past Richard Davis 7-1 in four ends in Sunday’s A final to finish with five wins.
A steal of four in two sealed the deal at 6-0 against the St. Albert reps of Davis, Don Johnston, Stacy Burzminski and Gil Jouan.
The game of the weekend in the 18-rink draw was Sunday’s semifinal between White and Colin Jenkyns. The St. Albert skip settled for five with the hammer in the first end before old age and treachery beat youth and exuberance by one point after White pulled ahead by two entering the last end.
“It was fun and competitive,” said White of the first bonspiel of the season.
“This year we’ve been taking it pretty quiet. We’re just relaxing and taking it easy. We’ll maybe gear up later in the season in December and January and play a few more spiels, but I don’t think we'll play in any major World Curling Tour spiels or anything like that,” White said of the team’s slow buildup to the Jan. 30 to Feb. 2 provincial qualifier in Sherwood Park. “I’ve been cutting back quite a bit too. At 57, the body is getting a little worn out.”
The next bonspiel is the Marv Huff Memorial in two weeks at the Thistle where the health of Chwedoruk's wonky knee will be addressed.
“We’ll see if Barry can make it. That will be our sign if we need to go shopping for another player. When you get old like that you get hurt,” Holowaychuk said.
Chwedoruk is based in Lac La Biche so his availability is limited for the super league. Gary Greening, the winning skip in last year’s St. Albert bonspiel, has filled in for White’s third in the super league, but during the weekend was curling with the Mark Johnson rink, with Doug McLennan of St. Albert and Dan Saunders as the front end for the B-event winners.
Johnson, the 2019 provincial senior runner-up to White, is giving the masters (60-plus) playdowns a shot with Greening, McLennan and Lance Dealy as rinkmates.
Chwedoruk was unavailable for the St. Albert bonspiel with a knee injury from slipping on an undisclosed surface, so Holowaychuk was promoted to third and the younger of the two White brothers was joined up front by Holowaychuk’s old curling buddy. Tom Silverside, early in the weekend and George Parsons, a member in good standing with the team, was parachuted in to close it out.
Parsons was the lead, Holowaychuk the second and McLennan the third for White as the 2013 senior provincial champions and national bronze medallists.
Provincial run
Incentive is high for another return trip to Canadians by four-peating at provincials, Feb. 12 to 16 at Lacombe. Canadians are March 17 to 22 at Portage la Prairie, Man.
“At the end of last year you kind of wondered if we're going to keep going and doing it and then you get the itch and once you’re out there it's OK. You want to go out and win the games and keep trying because it's lots of fun to get to Canadians and get to the worlds. It’s a big party if you get all of that happening,” said Holowaychuk, who is used to celebrating like a rock star as the alternate for the Ferbey Four, five-time Alberta men’s champions, four-time Brier winners and three-time world gold medallists as the Alberta Curling Federation’s Team of the Century.
It’s a grind as a competitive curler as White can attest.
“We put a lot into it,” said the four-time Canadian champion on the telephone curling circuit. “I’ve been doing it for a long time. My family puts up with me going out there and curling. When I was 50 I went seven, eight, nine weekends in a row. I was still pretty stoked and pretty dedicated,” added White, noting Holowaychuk has been a fixture on his rink since approximately 2005. “We tried playing men’s (at the provincial level with Kevin Tym as one of the regulars on the team) and seniors and it’s too many games, but the last couple of years we’ve been taking it a lot easier.”
Holowaychuk agreed. “It’s getting tougher and tougher. We're looking at two years away from being rookies in the masters and there is always a new batch of seniors coming in every year,” said the 2014 inductee into the St. Albert Curling Club’s wall of fame. “I don’t know how long we’ll keep going. We're still having fun at it and we're doing OK at it, but we don’t put into it near as what we used to whether it’s practice or bonspiels. We're definitely not playing every back to back weekend. It's now a more relaxed schedule and a little more easier, but we're still the same old style of curler. We’re still going to have our beer after the game and we’re up there (in the bar) to support the club.”
White joked he has “found my touch when I got older” curling in the senior ranks.
“It’s been great. I’ve been excited to go to the worlds and I appreciated it. I was really nervous at worlds (in Oestersund, Sweden after qualifying as the 2017 Canadian champion). I’ve never seen all those European teams and all that stuff before, but I enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun.” White said. “I enjoy the Canadians too.
“Alberta has been really competitive with guys like (Kurt) Balderston, Johnson and Terry Meek. There are still a lot of good Alberta teams and when we get to Canadians there are still a lot of guys there that have been in the Brier before so you’ve still got to work pretty hard and you’ve got to be pretty dedicated still to win the seniors so it’s not a tap-in as some people might think. It's really competitive still in the senior level and it's not really surprising. There have been a lot of good curlers around through the years and some of them have kind of been underneath (Kevin) Martin and (Randy) Ferbey, teams like that, and now they're coming out on top, kind of like me."
The 10th Canadian men’s senior title at worlds was the 8-2 final in six ends against two-time defending champion Mats Wrana of Sweden as White stole three in the first two ends for the 6-0 lead.
“That felt pretty good,” White said.
National bronze
After going 9-1 at worlds, White returned to Canadians this past season as the 8-1 Alberta champions and finished 8-4 at the Chilliwack Curling Club after going 6-4 in 2018 at Stratford, Ont., and 9-3 in 2017 at Fredericton, N.B.
“I don’t know if we wanted it as bad as the year before that because of the worlds stuff,” White said. “Maybe we took it a little light.
“You’ve still got to do the little things that make you win and I don’t know if we were doing that last year. Rocks maybe were not in the right spot and being at a curling club was a little different than the arena stuff. We like lots of swing,” added White, who grew up in Hinton and lives on an acreage west of Stony Plain. “I really enjoy curling in an arena. I think all the guys do too. We were in provincial men's in arenas and stuff like. There is more curl. The surface is really good. In the curling club it kind of got straight. It wasn’t my favourite, but you know what? There were a lot of good teams there.”
Alberta went 5-1 in pool B for qualification in the championship pool and advanced to the semifinals ranked second at 7-3.
"We started out really good. I’m not sure what really happened. We just lacked a little bit of confidence and we just didn’t play really good in one game and that’s basically all it took,” Holowaychuk said of the 6-3 loss to Bryan Cochrane of the Russell (Ont.) Curling Club and 2018 Canadian champion.
“I don’t think we were playing with full confidence going into that game. We started off really good and then we kind of let it slip a little in the middle. We were a little bit off and that's all it takes, but we got it back the bronze medal game,” Holowaychuk said of the 10-3 decision in six ends against Dave Boehmer of the Peterfield (Man.) Curling Club.
