The Wade White rink travelled farther than expected in their first year together to finish the Canadian Seniors Curling Championships with a bronze medal.
The Alberta champions – White, third Doug McLennan, second Dan Holowaychuk and lead George Parsons of the St. Albert Curling Club – lost only three games to reach the medal podium at the 50-plus nationals in Summerside, P.E.I.
“Bronze feels good. It really does,” McLennan said Monday, during a stopover in Toronto en route to flying home. “We put this thing together in January. I hadn’t met Wade or George before and I had never curled with Danny before, even though I’ve known him for a long time, so if you look at the run that we’ve had through cities, northerns, provincials and then at nationals it’s kind of Cinderella-ish. If you really look at it, four guys who haven’t played together hardly ever actually medalled at a national championship. So are we happy? Of course we are.”
Alberta streaked into the playoffs with seven straight wins to clinch second place in the round robin at 9-2.
However, things went south for Alberta in Saturday’s semifinal, an 11-5 loss in eight ends to Howard Rajala of Ontario.
The teams traded deuces through four ends before Ontario counted one in five and stole a deuce in six.
Alberta responded with one in seven, but in the next end the Rideau Curling Club team from Ottawa iced it with a four spot.
Team scoring favoured Ontario percentage-wise over White (63), McLennan (80), Holowaychuk (70) and Parsons (75) by a margin of 79 to 72.
“We were pretty disappointed how we played in our last game but it was just a one end kind of thing. We were one down with play in six and we went to play a little draw for one that caught some keen stuff and it got swept too far and they stole kind of a dummy deuce so now it’s three up (7-4) going the other way. That was kind of the end of that one,” McLennan said. “But hey, no excuses. Ontario played great. They’re good guys and they kicked our ass that day and then they walked out into the final and had it done to them.”
Wayne Tallon of Fredericton, N.B. crushed Ontario 11-3 in eight ends in Sunday’s gold-medal game.
In the round robin New Brunswick finished first at 10-1 for a berth in the final. Ontario won the third-place 8-3 tiebreaker with Rod MacDonald of Charlottetown, P.E.I. with an easy 10-1 score in six ends for a shot at Alberta in the playoffs.
Alberta raised its level of play after dropping to 2-2 in the 9-7 loss to New Brunswick. A four-ender in seven by the Maritimers left Alberta trailing 9-3.
“The level of competition there was very good,” McLennan said. “We thought we would really have one of the best sweeping teams there and I think we did have arguably the best sweeping team, and yet the ice wasn’t conducive to carrying any stones anyway. You kind of had to throw that heavier weight and maybe you would get another foot out of it if you were sweeping real hard at the end so that negated some of what we thought would maybe be a bit of an advantage for us.”
A tricky ice surface and unpolished rocks at the Silver Fox Curling & Yacht Club took their toll on the competitors.
“The ice and rocks all week were a little suspect. Every team struggled with them so whoever kind of pounced on them first was kind of the guy to win the game. You could see that with some of the play with some of the teams and especially the women’s teams. They tried to keep it a lot simpler all the time, just keep the game close until somebody might be able to figure something out,” McLennan said.
Alberta was bit hard by the flu bug at nationals and the lengthy tournament schedule made it a tougher grind than your average weekend bonspiel.
“It’s 11 games (plus playoffs) played over a course of a week and a bit. There is not a lot of time for sightseeing, plus it’s winter anyways, and most days you play two games a day,” said McLennan, the oldest Alberta curler at age 55. “I feel I’m in pretty good shape right now because that’s more games that I’ve played in a long time.
“But I don’t think we were that tired. We wouldn’t have been any more tired than anybody else.”
No decision has been made about the rink returning next year to defend its provincial title.
“We’ll go away from this experience pretty happy and then we’ll see who wants to play with who when the pond freezes up next fall,” McLennan said.
The big winner at nationals was the St. Albert Curling Club. The Deb Santos rink was the women’s silver medallist after finishing 9-4 overall.
It’s also the first year for multiple St. Albert representation at nationals since 1974 with Marilyn Johnston in women’s, Hec Gervais in men’s and Marv Porowski in mixed.
“I will bang the drum and say that having both teams go to nationals and both medal, plus we also get to bring some banners home too, is pretty special for our little club,” said McLennan, the club’s past president.
