Monday, March 17, 2008

Brier signoff

















by Jill Officer

WINNIPEG – As I was down at ice level shooting some pics of the celebration, I noticed a brief grimace on the faces of Ben and Marc after they thought for a second that they had over swept their skipper’s final shot, but then the celebration began.

And so with my first perspective of a national championship through the eyes of the media, here are some of my final thoughts on this week’s Brier at the MTS Centre in Winnipeg…

• First, I loved doing media stuff this week; a totally new perspective for me, but one that I thought was great.

• It’s not easy being a media person at the Brier. Trying to watch four games at a time during the round robin and write blogs and columns and do interviews is more than a handful worth of work.

• So, you thought Alberta’s Ben and Marc were awesome sweepers to watch on TV? You should see them in person.

Johnny Mo proved you can curl with a broken finger… and be really good at it! Morris received the Brier MVP award.

• Women’s curling closed the gap on men’s curling this year… I think the Scotties’ level of play was better than ever in 2007-08, and perhaps even out-curled the Brier this year. And no, I’m not just saying that because my own team was in it, and won the thing.

• Nova Scotia’s Brian Rafuse was oh-so-close to beating a number of the top teams here this week, and sent a message to everyone that their team will be one to watch at the Canadian Seniors in Prince Albert in a couple of weeks.

• Winnipeg’s Brier was the seventh most attended in history with 165,075 people coming out. Yesterday’s final had 9,223 fans in the stands.

• Happy Freakin’ Birthday to Ben Hebert... that’s one heck of a present!

• It was an awesome sight to see… a very long embrace by curling buddies Marc Kennedy, and Newfoundland and Labrador second Chris Schille. Schille was down at ice level after the ceremonies were over and the ice was being torn apart, and he was obviously very happy for his good friend.

So I wrap this up feeling somewhat sad that the excitement is over, glad that the work is done and, of course, congratulations Team Alberta for a well-deserved Brier championship. And thanks to editor gk for letting me run wild on the TCN Blog!

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