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MAKE HOMEPAGE
Are they the Best Ever?
It is a sports question you can’t ever answer – but it makes for good discussion. Are this year’s Indianapolis Colts better than the Baltimore Colts of the Johnny Unitas era? Are this year’s New York Yankees better than the Yankees of the Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Roger Maris/Mickey Mantle eras? Is Jennifer Jones the skip of the best-ever Manitoba curling team?
Jones, Cathy Overton-Clapham, Jill Officer, and Dawn Askin won their third consecutive Canadian title this year. That puts them in rare company. Lots of Manitobans have won back to back Manitoba titles and even fewer with the exact same lineup. Very few have won back-to-back Canadian titles. Even fewer have won three in a row.
On the men’s side of things, Gordon Hudson won two in a row but with a lineup change. Don Duguid won two in a row with Hunter, Pettapiece and Wood. Then they quit. Maybe that was the best Manitoba team of all time but they only won two Canadian titles. However, they also won back-to-back world titles.
Other than Jones, the only Manitoba skip to win three Canadian titles in a row is Lloyd Gunnlaugson who won three senior men’s, but not with identical lineups all three years.
And with the current exception of Jones, no Manitoba team has ever won back-to-back Canadian women’s, junior women’s or senior women’s titles.
Of course the discussion could readily evolve into a debate about whether or not Team Jones should be included in the debate at all since they never had to win a Manitoba championship the past two years – they didn’t have to play the zone qualifying process on club ice. They didn’t have to play the Manitoba championship, either. They were a Canadian team entry – not a purely Manitoba team some might argue.
There are a handful of back-to-back-to-back Manitoba champion skips in the record books. In the 70s Chris Pidzarko (now More) won three junior women’s in a row followed by Patti Vande who won three in a row and 30 years later Calleen Neufeld did it. Dorothy McKenzie won three senior women’s in a row in the mid-70s and more recently Elaine Jones won three Masters women’s titles in a row. None of them had the same lineup all three years.
Gunnlaugson actually won four Manitoba senior men’s titles in a row. He is the only skip in any of the four Manitoba men’s age category championships to have even three wins in a row.
Ernie Boushy’s mid-60’s mixed champion team is the only team in the record books to win three consecutive Manitoba championships with the same lineup. Boushy, Ina Light and Garry DeBlonde actually won four in a row. After their first, Bea McKenzie was replaced by Betty Hird for a trio of championships.
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I told you last week you’d have to check this space to see how we made out in our Masters zone playoff. I doubt if it has been reported elsewhere. Even on my own website, the coverage of Masters events is limited to skip names and I haven’t yet discovered who won all the rural zones.
However, if you did check my website, you saw Norm Magnusson as a Winnipeg zone winner and I am pleased to report that I throw lead stones for Norm. For the first time in 30 years, I will get a chance to play in a Manitoba championship again. I have been reporter, organizer, and master of ceremonies dozens (maybe hundreds) of times over the past 30 years. It will be fun to be on the playing side again.
It was 1981 when Murray Nye, Keith Kyle, Dave Wallace and I played in the Labatt Tankard and made it all the way to the final game in the Keystone Centre. I was young enough then to think I would get more chances.
Never again in the men’s or the mixed. Never in the senior men’s.
It shows how important it is to appreciate every moment. It may turn out to be even more special than we realized at the time.
For complete Manitoba curling coverage, and even the occasional opinion, visit my website – www.thecurler.com. To share your opinion on this or other topics, contact me at myopinion@thecurler.com.
