OFFER EXTENDED......MCA 121: Share Your MCA Bonspiel Memories - Win Passes to the MCT Championships

Saturday Dec 27 2008

Third in a Series Showcasing the MCA Men's Bonspiel

You still have a chance to win Manitoba Curling tour Event Passes. Send your memories of the MCA men's bonspiel, on-ice or off-ice, to resby@thecurler.com by Friday morning, January 2nd.

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CFRW’s RockTalk and thecurler.com have some passes to give away for the Manitoba Curling Tour’s Championships at Morris, January 2-4. Win them by sharing your favourite memory of the MCA men’s Bonspiel. The best e-mail is also eligible to win thecurler.com’s ‘Best Email of the Month’ prize –a logo’d golf shirt.    

Send your email, with one or two favourite MCA bonspiel stories, to resby@thecurler.com .   

To start, here are my favourite five MCA Bonspiel memories, going back 40 years to my first ever MCA bonspiel game – which is still my #1 MCA ‘spiel memory.

#1 -  1967: while attending University of Manitoba, I entered the MCA with three classmates and waited eagerly to see our name, and who we played,  in the Winnipeg Tribune. When it came, it was that dream-come-true that many teams hope for but never get in the ‘spiel. We were drawn for our first ever game against Bruce Hudson on Sheet #2 at Granite. Remember that in 1967, Bruce Hudson was Kerry Burtnyk and Jeff Stoughton rolled into one – he would play that year in his fourth consecutive Manitoba final game and he would win his second. We stayed close in that game for 8 ends (or maybe Bruce let us stay close) and as the years have passed, that memory still tops my MCA best moments list.

#2 – 1981: playing with Murray Nye, Keith Kyle and Dave Wallace out of Brandon we opened the MCA bonspiel with a loss to Jim Ursel – again at Granite. On one-leg, we went through the other side of the spiel including wins over some favoured teams like Ron Westcott and won a berth in the Labatt Tankard which was to be played in Brandon.

#3 – 1969 or ’70: during the course of the bonspiel one of those years, we were drawn against Howard Wood Sr.  ‘Pappy’ Wood had curled in over 60 consecutive MCA bonspiels and it was an honour to be in the ice with him but as a group of young hotshots we didn’t expect any trouble beating him. We were wrong.  It was easy to see why he had won those championships so many years before. The old gentleman threw lead rocks and called the game.  He out-thought us all day as he got the absolute most out of a ‘barely good enough team’.

#4 – 1988: everyone who was in it has to include the 1,280 team 100th anniversary bonspiel in their list of favourites. Find a copy of the 1988 MCA yearbook and you’ll find the list of everyone who played that year. My Morris team was Lorne and Don Hamblin and Bill Grabowsky and isn’t it one of the great things about our sport that 20 years later, I am still curling with one of those guys. I wonder if the MCA has considered trying to run a big celebration bonspiel in 2013 – the MCA’s 125th anniversary. It might not reach 1,280 but I believe it could be a big one.

#5 – 2007: 40 years after my first MCA Bonspiel game, I played my first MCA game with my son Michael and his friends from Deer Lodge. No, I can’t recall the games with the same detail. Maybe that’s advancing age – or maybe it is that the game wasn’t as important as the guys I was playing with. This will be our third year playing together and I am enjoying introducing them to one of the great tradition’s of the curling world.

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