REGINA -- Saskatchewan’s 2020 Brier Bronze medalists are back on the pebbled ice for the first time since March.
Team Dunstone, who finished third at the Canadian Men’s National Curling Championships, is getting ready for their first competition of the season, with their new second, Kirk Muyres.
“I’ve had so many good teammates throughout the years and it’s nice to add some more faces to that, some more minds to that,” Muyres said. “Everybody’s kind of got a different way of looking at things.”
Muyres played with skip, Matt Dunstone, in 2018, when Regina hosted the Brier. He also won a junior national championship with third Braeden Moskowy in 2011. However, Muyres has only played on the front end once, when Dunstone joined the disbanded Team Steve Laycock squad in 2017.
“He hasn’t played a whole lot of second yet, so there’s obviously more communicating, more sweeping for him, and you know it’s probably one of those things where after we play an event or two we’ll have more to go off of,” Dunstone said.
The team spearheaded the creation of this weekend’s ‘Men’s Super Series’ competition. The mini-league features the top five men’s teams in Saskatchewan: Colton Flasch, Kody Hartung, Rylan Kleiter and Shawn Meachem.
Dunstone was motivated to organize it, given how many events on the curling schedule have been cancelled.
“When you want something done, you just gotta take matters into your own hands,” Dunstone said.
Dunstone even secured a webcast, so fans can tune into the action, which starts Friday.
“We got a live stream coming in so everybody’s going to get some TV time which is obviously great, and especially in a year where TV times have been cut,” Dunstone said.
Saskatchewan curlers found out last week they won’t be allowed to compete outside of the province. That includes the Brier and the Scotties. However, CurlSask and Curling Canada say they’re working on a safe way for their athletes to compete at the national championships, which begin roughly four months from now.
“Some huge events across Western Canada that we would have loved to go to and some national training centers that we had access to use to our advantage,” Dunstone said.
“The people that are making those decisions are in a really tough spot so we totally respect that but at the same time we’re disappointed but we understand why it happened,” Muyres observed.
Last weekend, the Saskatchewan women’s tour competition, which also took place at the Highland, was called mid-way through. The curling club was notified someone who attended the club a week prior had tested positive for COVID-19.
“Everybody’s safety is number one, and that’s going to be no different for this weekend,” Dunstone said.
