As a club curler, have you ever fantasized about playing a big game and having your name in lights?
Al Seredynski and Bruce Wilkinson of the Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club (AMCC) in Winnipeg MB had the opportunity to enter a team in the 1994 Manitoba curling Association (MCA) bonspiel and had their 15 minutes of fame each day as they curled. Both were members of a five-man team that curled twice weekly in a men’s league. One of the team members, Reyn Davis, was also a sportswriter for the Winnipeg Free Press. As he was already covering the spiel he could not curl with us but to compensate obtained our team in the AMCC’s Calcutta held prior to the event. He arranged for a photographer to follow the team during their games and then wrote an article each day during the event.
The 1994 spiel would have had 512 teams taking part – not like the 100th annual in 1988 that had 1280 teams entered. There were a guaranteed 8 games between Thursday evening when it began and Sunday afternoon when the knockouts started. That meant you curled two or three ten-end games a day unlike the eight-end games in a lot of spiels today.
We began the spiel on Thursday evening against a team from Brandon at the West St. Paul Curling club losing a close game 8 -6. On Friday we had 3 games and ended the day at 2 and 2, in the morning game we had a great game at the Granite winning 8 to 6 but fell 8 to 4 in the afternoon. On Saturday we went 2 and 0 leaving our record at 4 and 2. On Sunday morning we won another for a 3-game winning streak. This came to an end that evening losing a tight game that we played well in but came out on the losing end of an 8 – 7 score. We played our final game on Monday afternoon and lost 10 – 6.
While we were playing at the Granite Curling Club on Friday Bob Johnson, our second, told Reyn that it was Bruce Wilkinson’s wife’s 38th birthday on Saturday hoping Reyn would put it in the paper. Fortunately, Reyn checked his sources ahead of time and found out that it was her 35th birthday instead. Bruce would have been in more trouble with his wife aside from being gone on her birthday weekend if it was printed as her 38th. Her father was a curler as well and should have known better than to have a child during the third week of January.
We made many new friends and found that quite a few of the curlers enjoyed reading about our progress through the daily articles. The newspaper headlines in the attached articles present an idea of the fun we had during that bonspiel. At each game we were greeted by the competition with friendly comments like “Hey you’re the guys that are in the paper today!”. While curling at the Pembina Curling Club Vic Peters who was still in the running for the Manitoba championship came over to say hi and to tell us they were following our exploits in the paper each day.
Reyn’s comments about Bob’s wobble and Al’s quivering leg stuck with us in the following years. Bob became “Wobbly Bobly” and Al was “Quivering Al”. As team composition changed over the ensuing years others became “Mr. Magoo”, Mr. Excuse, The Eunuch and Mr. Precise.
As you can see, the bonspiel experience was enjoyable providing memories that stayed with us to this day. Curling annually in the MCA until about 2014 when it became The Manitoba Open, was simply a lot of fun. But the 1994 MCA was most memorable and most rewarding for us. Over the years in the MCA Bonspiel, we met teams like Jeff Stoughton, Barry Fry, the Junior champions from Norway and a team out of Chicago who we lent a winter jacket to the skip as he did not realize how cold it got here in Winnipeg. However, we never thought we would be followed in the paper daily for the spiel. We were honored to represent the average Manitoba curling team.
It was experiences like this that developed our love of the sport and encouraged us to support the sport by spending a couple of decades each on the board of directors for Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club, including as Club President.
Al Seredynski and Bruce Wilkinson, Teammates since 1989
Other Images:Winnipeg-Free-Press-Jan-20-1994-p-58-aef1f54ff53419bab0411eeca3990273.pdf
Winnipeg-Free-Press-Jan-21-1994-p-51-0ffcb655851663b6518a8ef8287eba79.pdf