Big Read: Winners of three straight Scotties titles, Kerri Einarson’s Manitoba rink is among the most dominant and forward-thinking in curling — and it’s only getting started. (KrRutherford │ CoolbetCanada)
Winners of three straight Scotties titles, Kerri Einarson’s Manitoba rink is among the most dominant and forward-thinking in curling — and it’s only getting startedlink while you’re driving north on Highway 8, and there’s a good chance you’ll miss Camp Morton, Manitoba. It’s on the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, and Camp Morton is tough to describe, because it’s not a city, or a town, or a village. “Road” is the most accurate way to capture the place, according to Kerri Einarson, who lives there.
Coming together took a leap of faith for every member — left to right: Meilleur, Birchard, Sweeting and Einarson — three of whom had to change positions. incredibly frickin’ huge among a very loyal fanbase of people in their 80s, or thereabouts. When the petite 34-year-old with pin straight dark hair and a dialled-in on-ice gaze is competing, nearly every television at Betel Home Foundation in Gimli, Man., is locked on curling.
Just a year apart in age, Kerri and Kyle were coming up together in curling, and the sibling rivalry was real. But then, Kyle was killed in a snowmobiling accident. He was 20 years old. “It was extremely hard,” Einarson says. “It happened right before we had provincials, and I wasn’t going to play, but I knew he would still want me to.” Curling was a bond they’d shared, after all, and it helped Einarson cope.
Curling fans sure were skeptical about this new team made up of skips, a “super rare” move in elite curling, as Sweeting puts it. “People had doubts about whether we could actually do what we set out to do,” Birchard adds. “That was something we wanted to prove to everybody — but mostly to ourselves — that we had made the right decision in coming together and trying something new.”
When he began coaching the team earlier this year, Carruthers noticed that spirit immediately. “She brings a lot of fire to the table,” he says. “When she’s out there competing, she just wants it. Even in practice, she’s fired up, trying to make every shot [and] mad if she misses one.” Adds Gushue, who has teamed up with Einarson in mixed doubles: “I love her intensity.”
That season, they lost the Canada Cup final, won a Grand Slam Event — the Players — and lost in another Grand Slam final, the Champions Cup. “I think we made like 10 finals,” Sweeting says. “I mean, we definitely came out of the gates pretty hot.” The Scotties was in Moose Jaw, Sask., in the same venue that had hosted in 2015, where Sweeting had lost in the final for a second straight year. Once again, she found herself in the final, this time up against Ontario’s Team Homan. “I just remember being scared of losing again,” Sweeting says. “I was so nervous.”end, and Einarson had the hammer and a draw to the button for the win. But as soon as that stone left her fingers, she knew it was heavy.
“That was devastating, because you don’t know if you’re going to win the Scotties again — it’s so rare,” Sweeting says. “You finally break through and you never imagine that you’re not going to get to play in the world championship. At that point I remember thinking: ‘Well, they can’t just not have the women’s worlds. They have to have it at some point, right? They have to replay it.’ But they never did.
When Einarson got home to Camp Morton, she barely saw the inside of her home. If she wasn’t sleeping, Einarson was out somewhere on her family’s 167-acre lot. “I didn’t want to spend any time inside,” she says. “I was washing the car, going for bike rides with the girls, I was mowing the lawn, doing whatever I could outside. My husband was like, ‘Are you gonna come inside, ever?’ I said, ‘No, I feel like I’ve been in jail for a long time and I don’t want to be trapped in four walls again.
Einarson’s eyes welled with tears as she looked into the crowd, at Kyle and Khloe and Kamryn and her parents and a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins. She celebrated with her teammates while the fans roared. “To actually feel like Team Canada was amazing,” Einarson says. “That was the first time we truly did.”
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