Lang has fond memories of his time in Brandon

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This article was published 03/12/2016 (3441 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Minutes before stepping onto the ice for the 1982 Brier final, Rick Lang suddenly became anxious.

“The sense came over us that, ‘Oh my God, here we are in a third straight final’ and the thought you don’t want in your head is what if we don’t win this one and that thought came into our heads and we had a lot of talk and discussion about it because obviously you are not going to play well if you have that fear of losing all the time,” said Lang, who threw third stones for legendary Northern Ontario skip Al Hackner.

They’d lost the two previous national men’s curling finals — 10-6 to Saskatchewan’s Rick Folk in 1980 and gave up three in the 10th end of a 5-4 loss to Reston-born Kerry Burtnyk a year later, which Lang described as “devastating” — and came to the Keystone Centre as the heavy favourite to win the title.

But in the heat of the moment that was the last thing on Lang’s mind.

“We were — right before the game — absolutely on edge and scared,” he admitted. “I almost didn’t want to be here and yet it was the Brier final. I said to Al just before we were going on the ice, ‘Man, we could be at home opening up a beverage and sitting down and watching the Brier and having a great afternoon, and why are we doing this?’”

Northern Ontario would go on to steal one in the sixth, seventh and eighth ends en route to a 7-3 win over British Columbia’s Brent Giles. They would also win the world title later that year and replicated the double again in 1985.

For Lang, the 1982 Brier victory in Brandon was his second, having thrown third stones for Bill Tetley in 1975, but he will always have a soft spot for the Keystone Centre.

“I can’t quite recall what it was but ’82 was the year that I have all the really good memories of this place,” Lang admitted.

The lifetime Thunder Bay, Ont., resident is now 62 years old and is back in the Wheat City for this week’s Home Hardware Canada Cup of Curling. He’s currently working with Curling Canada as a national team coach with the men’s program.

Lang, who also won a Canadian senior men’s crown in 2007 with Hackner before coming away with a silver medal at worlds in Edmonton, started coaching his daughter, Sarah Potts (nee Lang), before joining the national organization.

“It’s kind of replaced my competitive fires that I didn’t have any more once I wasn’t able to play competitively,” Lang said. “It’s been a good ride and now I get to work with the very best teams in the world and I really enjoy it.”

Although he reached the peak of the curling mountain during his playing days, Lang believes his team could have used a coach to help talk them out of certain shots and calm them down if they were getting up in each other’s business.

Now he gets to be that person.

Nevertheless, he still enjoys hitting the ice at a low-key level.

“I still play with Al Hackner in our Tuesday night men’s club,” Lang said. “We have our own teams but we all sit together after and we’re still best friends and we do a lot of things together. We had a good ride together all those years and I still have a lot of fun with him.”

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