1999 Brier
SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Curling
1999 BRIER
ON THE ROCKS
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Saskatchewan teetering
Canada's curling heartland is facing another tumble on national stage
The sod-busters haven't gone bust. Yet.
The 'Last Shootout of the Century,' however, is certainly on standby.
Word is that 10 bus es from Saskatoon, site of next year's Brier, are expected to arrive here Thursday. They still might be coming armed and dangerous.
Odds are that sometime before they get here they will be sending a telegram to their team.
Bus arrives at 1:30. Be under it.
Once again the stubble-jumpers have sent somebody new to the Brier. And once again we're watching a team in trouble.
For the longest time there yesterday, it looked like the plow jockeys were going to be out of it before the end of the opening weekend.
Gerald Shymko admits it. Visions of Don Gardiner and Jim Packet danced in his head sometime around the fifth end of their third game.
Gardiner, the last time the Brier was held here, showed how low Saskatchewan could go.
Remember Don?
One win. Ten losses.
Then there was Jim Packet.
Ditto. One win. Ten losses.
"Oh, ya. I thought of them. Definitely,'' said the steer wrestling-sized farmer from Calder, Sask.
"Jim and Don. Everybody knows about them. Everybody here knows about Don. He was 1-10 right here.''
Shymko scolded himself for even thinking of them.
"You can't think of things like that,'' he said.
But Shymko knew that more than a few of the 10,266 fans in the stands yesterday afternoon were thinking what he was thinking.
This year it was going to be different. This year Gerald Shymko, well-known and highly respected on the curling tour if a no-name to the nation, was going to be the guy who could finally end the futility for the province which gave us the winningest Brier rink ever.
Instead there'd been the suggestion that they entered the Shymko Dancers.
No team which has lost its first two games has ever won the Brier. With the field they have here, maybe this is the time and place. But three losses in a row? With one of the losses to Newfie? That would have been see ya.
Newfoundland led 4-2 after five. And the 'Dead or Alive' Sask-watch began.
Glenn Goss's rink from the Rock gagged on the game late and Saskatchewan went to the Brier Patch still alive if not entirely well.
Shymko came here as Saskatchewan's Ken Hunka.
When he won his province he was over the harvest moon.
"I'm going to Disney World,'' he shouted. "And I'm going to kiss Mickey Mouse.''
He did go to Disney World, too. His wife had won a trip there.
But this has been a house of chambers.
"We're living on the edge a bit,'' he said, meaning the edge of the cliff.
"I guess that was a kind of an exciting game for the crowd,'' he said of scoring three in the 10th to win 8-6 without having to even throw his last brick.
"It was kinda exciting to us, too.
"All I wish right now, all I hope is that we can just get going like we were at the provincials. We played 22 games and none of the games we've played here matches any of them.''
And he offers no excuses.
"We're just not playing solid. The ice is super. The fans are great. It's us.''
This is the 20th year of the Labatt Brier, the 20th year since the event made the switch in sponsorship from tobacco to beer.
Saskatchewan, home of the famed Ernie Richardson rink which won more Briers than any other team, managed to win the first one in 1980. Saskatchewan hasn't won since.
Shymko, my personal pick-to-click in this Brier, I should probably point out, still could end up a Gardiner or a Packet.
Or a Douglas Harcourt.
Three wins. Eight losses.
Or a Brad Heidt, Kirk Ziola, Brad Herbert or a Rod Montgomery, losers of more games than they won for Saskatchewan at the Brier in the last 19 years, too.
At 42, Shymko had waited for a career to get here. To go home just another forgotten failure isn't what he had in mind.
The idea is to be the guy to write a story here like Schmirler the Curler did in Nagano.
"Our system is good,'' Shymko says of Saskatchewan.
"We have a lot of teams. Good teams. A lot of good teams that you've never heard of.''
The knock is that Saskatchewan sends one of them every year and you never hear of them again.
"Rick Folk won in 1980. He didn't even make it out of his club the next year,'' he said. "That's Saskatchewan.''
Since then it's been a sorry story.
Listen to 'Terry Jones At Large' weekdays at 8:35 a.m. and 5:05 p.m. on 790 CFCW.