Friesen on the button — Team McEwen adjusting to major changes

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This article was published 18/11/2020 (1962 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Team Mike McEwen has taken physical distancing to another level.

The Manitoban foursome started spreading out when second Derek Samagalski moved to Brandon three years ago, eventually settling in Carberry. Then lead Colin Hodgson moved to Red Lake, Ont., and started co-managing Red Lake Golf and Country Club, leaving skip McEwen and third Reid Carruthers the only ones somewhat near their home West St. Paul Curling Club.

But for the first time since the 2020 Tim Hortons Brier tiebreaker, the team competed together on the pebbled ice Friday in Penticton, B.C.

They got a few brief practice sessions and a shaky six ends out of the way, losing 8-4 to B.C.’s Steve Laycock, before running the table and winning the Ashley HomeStore Curling Classic final 6-3 over Ontario’s Glenn Howard on Monday.

“We didn’t get off to a good start with the first game, but after that … I thought ‘Why’d we come all this way if we’re just going to be bad? We might as well try to win some games here,’” Hodgson told the Brandon Sun via phone interview.

From a packed viewing area during their 4-2 loss to Brendan Bottcher in the final last year to a minimal scattering of fans and volunteers in the building due to COVID-19 restrictions, Samagalski said it was a different feel, but simply great to be back in action.

“It was nice just to get on the ice and bonding with your teammates. It was a blast. We had a great time and the event in Penticton, and it’s a world-class event,” Samagalski said.

“We would come back here over and over and over when we get the chance.”

Team McEwen can’t exactly ride the momentum of a 4-1 pool showing and three playoff wins — including a 4-2 decision over Laycock and 6-4 against Alberta’s Kevin Koe — as its schedule is empty until at least the end of 2020. Even then, the $18,000 haul for Monday’s triumph doesn’t compare to prizes at the Grand Slam events. That schedule of six events is now just two, with the first not happening until April.

“It’s tough. All of us do this for a living,” Samagalski said.

“When they took that away from us in September, October, it was tough. We got to spend a lot more time with our families, which is awesome, but all of us are die-hard curling guys that live and breathe curling.

“… We understand what’s going on in the world and just got to do whatever we can to defeat it.”

Samagalski spent the summer working at the Carberry Sandhills Golf Club and said he’s “loving every minute” of small-town life with wife Selena and two-year-old daughter Dekkar.

Hodgson echoes that sentiment. Before the global pandemic, he regularly made the five-hour commute to Red Lake, where his now fiancée Brittnie Tetreault lives. The couple bought a house and is putting down roots in the mining town of about 4,000.

“It’s great. It’s so good for my mental health, that’s for sure … It’s really just slowed my life down. I’m not wasting time sitting in lines, in traffic,” Hodgson said.

“I have more available time and a slower pace of life is something I haven’t personally done very much. I didn’t realize how much time I was wasting on frivolous things. Now I actually get to focus on me and my family and the business.”

Hodgson, 30, and Brandon’s Faron Asham own Dynasty Curling, the company that designed uniforms for the Brier and Scotties Tournament of Hearts the past two years. So, naturally, Hodgson’s attention to curling detail extends beyond throwing precise guards and manipulating stones with directional sweeping. He picked up on a few things in Penticton after eight months off and all the ongoing uncertainty around sports.

For one, the athletes had a deeper sense of gratitude for the chance to compete in the first place.

“It gives you a different sense of appreciation for not only just competition or getting out of the house and doing things but actually for your competitors. You’re all going through it the same way. People seem to embrace it more so and respect each other,” he said. “… It’s encouraging, pretty exciting and needed.”

The second was just how unique fan engagement was across the country, and even the globe.

“We’ve never seen teams do it the way they’re doing. Teams are streaming and presenting their own sponsors, their families can watch all their games all of the sudden,” Hodgson said.

“It was access in a different way. If you’re watching the Koe stream they have certain announcers that they’ve hired or partnered with to do these games. Then you go on the CBC stream … a more classic one.

“… There’s lots of different ways to consume the events now. It’s different, it’s great and this is the way of the future for sure, but we have to be careful the way we do it. The economics of it can be fascinating if you’re pulling viewers from events.”

The lead admitted travelling during the pandemic isn’t recommended, but noted the team mitigated the risk of potential COVID-19 spread by staying at an Airbnb, avoiding restaurants and arriving at the rink in uniform and just in time for warmup.

“We don’t take it lightly to come here or go to any event and travel. It was a very difficult decision for our team and for our families,” Hodgson said, adding the event organizers ran a tight ship.

“You can’t walk in the door without sanitizer, you have to clean your shoes as you walk in, because of that, that’s the reason our team is able to feel comfortable coming here. It’s not lost on us that we’re being frivolous with travel and risk and we understand those risks.”

For now, Team McEwen has to connect from afar again, and code red restrictions are preventing everyone except Hodgson from hitting the practice ice. Hodgson came up with another idea to connect the group, however, purchasing an array of video equipment including wall mounts and lights to virtually bring his skip in.

Essentially, McEwen can connect to Hodgson’s cameras via video chat and communicate with wireless headphones, calling shots from nearly 500 kilometres down the highway just like he would from across the rink.

“Technology has really changed and seeing some of the streaming is fascinating where you can take it to,” Hodgson said.

“It’s also important that we might have just proved a point to ourselves that maybe we just need to keep our minds sharp. We need to be prepared that way, because you could be physically prepared, but if you’re not mentally prepared, you’re not going to perform.”

While draws, peels and angle-raises are few and far between until COVID-19 is taken out, a quick weekend of normalcy left Hodgson pleased to see fans’ hunger for the game alive and well.

“We had people all over the world commenting and having an appreciation for having something to watch that’s not a television show,” Hodgson said.

“It’s actual live sports and something they’ve been craving for a long time.” 

 » tfriesen@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @thomasmfriesen