THUNDER BAY – A tragedy has reminded one and all here at the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors exactly where sport should rank in one's life experience.
And it's an entirely personal belief. For very few can share the experience of the Alberta men's team, and in particular 19-year-old lead Kyle Reynolds.
Reynolds' father was killed by a car at a crosswalk Tuesday night back home in Grande Prairie, host of March's Ford World Women's Championship. On Wednesday, Reynolds' mother flew home but Kyle made the decision to stay and continue competing.
Since then, the Albertans have won four must-win games in a row and are now in tonight's semi-final versus Ontario (live on CurlTV).
Kyle's older brother Codey, himself an active player in the Peace region, has been meeting the team at the rink doors after each game, and engaging his brother in a huge hug. Kyle finished in a three-way tie atop the leaderboard in lead shooting percentage, firing 86, 56, 85 and 73 over that span of games.
Meanwhile, black ribbons have been subtedly appearing on player jackets over the last day or so. The story is here, and readers wishing to send messages of support can e-mail to: albertamen@tbaytel.net ... other team e-mail addresses are listed here.
• Canada's Olympic curling TV schedules are now confirmed – until they change, of course – for both TSN and CBC. The cable provider is very heavy on the sport, and the full sked can be found here. As for CBC, which has tons of round-robin highlights and packages and also the playoffs, the full sked will be published in the special February Olympic issue of The Curling News. If you don't subscribe, we invite you to do so promptly, so you can receive your copy in time for the first day of rock throwing on Feb. 13...
• Overall, CBC is providing over 1,000 hours of Olympic coverage across the sport spectrum, which kicks NBC's 416-hour butt... and doesn't even include French-language Radio-Canada coverage...
• The Sports Network – no, not the Canadian all-sports cable channel but a U.S.-based online content provider – has updated its Torino 2006 Olympic curling profile and, it says here, has done so in prompt, professional fashion;
• Okay, we missed it: TCN didn't realize that Korea has an Olympic team already confirmed for both Turin0 2006 and Vancouver 2010...
• Finally, the Serbs are coming. Actually, they're already here. Welcome aboard.
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