It was an exciting day at the Fort Frances Curling Club on Sunday as two local teams vied for top honours in the 49th-annual Northern Ontario Fire Fighters Curling Championships.
The event, hosted by the Alberton firefighters, saw the Mitchell Seguin rink from Dawson (also featuring Bert Seguin, Claude Seguin, and Mark Jodoin) battling last year’s champs, the Tim Nordin rink of Rainy River (with Dale Morrison, Dave Seguin, and Dale Ossachuk).
In the end, the 2007 champs prevailed against the Seguin rink, earning the right to represent Northern Ontario at the national showdown March 26-April 4 in Richmond, B.C.
“It’s quite surprising,” Nordin admitted after his rink’s final win. “There are a lot of good teams here, so it was tough to repeat.
“It was a shock to both of us that we ended up playing each other in the finals and it was a thrill to play against them,” he added, noting the Seguin rink represented their sister fire department.
Not only that, but there also was a family connection between the two teams—with Dave Seguin being the uncle of Mitchell Seguin from the opposing team.
With the nationals held in Thunder Bay last year, Nordin said it’s much more exciting to know they will be travelling to British Columbia this year.
“They’re all new teams competing this year,” he noted, adding he recently had checked the website to see who already had qualified for the nationals.
“But I think we’ll do all right. . . . We had a few bumps last year, but we came back.”
The Nordin rink went 6-4 last year to end up in fifth place at the nationals after losing a tie-breaker match.
He indicated with several bonspiels coming up in the next few weeks, his team will get some more practice in just in time for the nationals.
NOFFCA director Ken Kurz said the provincial championships went very well throughout the weekend.
“Alberton and Fort Frances put on a good hosting,” he stressed. “They had to bid on it and go through a lot of work to have everything ready.”
He said the last time the provincials were held in Fort Frances was in 1995.
“It’s a really good facility . . . and everyone had fun getting together,” he enthused. “It was a good time and there was good participation.”
Twenty-three teams in all competed for the chance to represent Northern Ontario in British Columbia, with local teams also hailing from host Alberton and Devlin.
The 2009 provincials will be held in Sioux Lookout.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
