Joey Payeur
It was going to take more than a messed-up leg and an aching torso to keep the Muskie boys’ curling rink from its highly-expected continuation along the road to OFSAA.
Fort High, last year’s silver-medalists at the all-Ontarios, remained a serious contender for provincial honours again after going unbeaten at the NorWOSSA final here Sunday and Monday to win its third-straight league title.
It’s now full speed ahead for the Muskie quintet, who will maintain home-ice advantage when the NWOSSAA championships are held here Feb. 27-28.
With skip Chris Silver still nursing a hamstring injury that kept him out of the NorWOSSA qualifier two weeks ago, the Muskies shuffled the positional deck to full effect.
Silver threw second stones using the NorWOSSA-allowed accessory of a push stick so as to not have to crouch down in the hack and possibly exacerbate the injury.
That pushed regular third Daniel Vandenbrand into the role of throwing skip stones while Jason Bazylewski and his bad back was promoted from second to third.
Davis Jackson at lead and fifth Owen Riches rounded out the squad.
“We figured the second position was a pretty good spot for me,” explained Silver. “While I had some very important shots, it wasn’t like the whole end was riding on my shots.
“As for calling the game and calling the line, I was still in my comfort zone,” he added.
“As things went along, it just felt like a normal game and we played it like we always do.”
Vandenbrand, also having filled the skip’s role at the qualifier, didn’t flinch when asked to step in again.
“It was not really a problem to do so as my experience from before made this time feel more comfortable,” he noted.
“The rest of the team set me up pretty good both days and there was not that many shots that were too challenging for me.”
Bazylewski, meanwhile, shrugged off any talk of persevering through pain.
“I put it in the back of my mind,” he said of his back issues.
“I’ve got a high pain tolerance,” Bazylewski added. “It didn’t bother me at all.”
The Muskies opened with 7-2 wins over the Atikokan Voyageurs and Sioux Lookout Warriors on Sunday.
Then they got a surprisingly stiff challenge from an underdog Red Lake Rams’ rink Monday morning before coming out on top 3-1 to lock up an NWOSSAA berth reserved for the top two finishers.
With a chance to avoid a tie-breaker for the NorWOSSA gold medal with the Sioux Lookout Warriors (3-1), Fort High sputtered early against the Rainy River Owls before pulling away for a 6-3 triumph later Monday.
Owls’ skip Myron Armstrong and his team of third Hayden Haw, second Morgan Desserre, lead Jeremy Haw, and fifth Jesse Hasiuk led 2-0 after two ends.
But with Fort High already lying two, Armstrong’s last stone in the third bumped another Muskie rock into scoring position.
Vandenbrand then executed a textbook draw for four and the Muskies never looked back–save for the fourth end when Armstrong couldn’t hit-and-stick for three and instead settled for trailing 4-3.
“That was a big turnaround,” admitted Silver.
“They only got the two when they could have got three and tied it up, but we had some clutch guards put up that end,” he noted.
Jackson was buoyed by his team’s refusal to back down despite their battered physical condition.
“We definitely picked it up for [Silver] and all carried our team at different points,” said Jackson.
For his part, Riches has enjoyed picking fruitful knowledge as a rookie from one of the best high school curling wisdom trees he could have.
“It’s fun to curl with them and I learn a lot from them,” he enthused.
“I like curling with them. It’s a good experience.”
Silver and the veterans on his rink will get plenty of high-calibre practice in before NWOSSAA when they head to Nipigon for the U18 boys’ provincial championship running Feb. 23-26–with the NWOSSAA final slated to begin the next day.
“We’re going into NWOSSAA confident but not cocky,” Silver stressed.
“We’ll have the provincial championship going on the four days leading up to NWOSSAA and we’ll get in eight or nine good-calibre games there,” he reasoned.
“The rest of the teams at NWOSSAA will be gunning for us but that’s OK–we’ve experienced that before,” Silver added.
“We’ll be prepared and give it our all.”
Rainy River (1-3) won its opener 5-2 against Atikokan, but then was smoked 11-3 by the Warriors and beaten 6-1 by the Rams before losing to the Muskies.
