By Sean McIndoe
The recent success of local rinks may mean more than temporary glory for Ottawa curlers, it may signal the beginning of a shift in curling’s provincial balance of power.
Ottawa Curling Club teams took both the men’s and women’s titles in the Ontario junior championships last month, with John Morris’s mens rink going on to capture the national championship Feb. 1 in Calgary.
Meanwhile, Anne Merklinger’s Rideau Curling Club rink captured another provincial championship for Ottawa in January, and will represent Ontario at the upcoming Scott Tournament of Hearts in Regina.
The victories continue a trend that’s seen Ottawa emerge from the shadow of powerful Toronto rinks, says Ottawa Curling Club manager Danny Lamoureux.
“In the past we’d always been the sort of second cousin to Toronto. They always won everything, and we only recently started to make a dent,” Lamoureux says. “The feeling was that sure, we could always make it to the provincials, but then we’d just lose to Toronto every time.”
Rideau Curling Club manager Greg Richardson says the constant losses to Toronto rinks may have kept local teams from striving for top results.
“On the men’s side at least there were a group of teams that were dominating the men’s side for about ten years,” Richardson says. “They were world class, but I think that did stunt people in Ottawa. They’d get to provincials and that would be about it. They weren’t even thinking of going past provincials because once they got (there) they’d just lose out to the (Ed) Werenichs or the (Russ) Howards.”
But that attitude is changing.
“Anne Merklinger’s team has set a little bit of a precedent because they went at it and said listen, we’re going to form a team, we’re going to stay together for a few years, and we’re going to put the effort into it,” Richardson says. “And seeing that pay off, seeing them win the provincials, has a lot of other people saying ‘Hey, we can do it too’.”
But Merklinger says that while Toronto rinks were getting most of the attention, Ottawa teams were only a jolt of confidence away from moving to the elite level.
“I think over the last few years Toronto has pretty much dominated. But there’s been lots of valley teams that have been close,” Merklinger said. “What we’re seeing now is that a couple of teams have been more successful, so some other teams are seeing that success and they believe that they’re just as good as any team in the province, and its helped them play with a little more confidence than what they may have in the past.”
That boost of confidence is already paying off. In addition to the success of the Morris and Merklinger rinks, other local squads are on the brink of success. Three local men’s teams — Rich Moffatt and Dave Van Dine’s Rideau rinks and Bryan Cochrane’s Ottawa squad — competed at last weekend’s Nokia Cup provincial championship in Peterborough.
And Jenn Hanna skipped her Ottawa rink to a junior provincial championship in January.
Merklinger says that the success of those teams will force other local rinks to raise the quality of their game.
“When you have one of two teams do well, then the other teams in the region then have to play against the better teams all the time, so teams just naturally start to get better because they play those teams all the time,” says Merklinger, who adds the success furthers development at all levels.
That continued development could mean even more provincial championship contenders emerging from a city that Richardson says was already among the strongest in the country in terms of depth.
For her part, Merklinger is busy preparing for her third trip to the Scott Tournament. She says she’s confident that her team, which also includes Theresa Breen, Patti McKnight and Audrey Frey, will give Ottawa something to cheer about.
“We’re going back there this time with a little bit different kind of approach than maybe we did in the past,” she says, “because now we really believe that we have a good chance of being in the playoffs, and once your in the playoffs who knows what can happen.”