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Local curlers David Daoust and Manon Paquette know exactly how the American mixed doubles tandem of Sean Franey and BriAnna Weldon must feel.

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Well, maybe not exactly how they feel. Maybe a little of what they feel.

When Daoust and Paquette decided to start participating in the relatively new phenomenon of mixed doubles curling a few years ago, their best option, in terms of travel, was to play on a circuit outside Quebec, one of the first to take up this sport. who has grown by leaps and bounds.

“At that time, southern Ontario was just starting its tour and the idea of ​​bringing events closer to home interested me,” said Daoust. “Last year, while attending events in southern Ontario, I started talking to teams to see what kind of interest there might be in an event in Sudbury.

“Could we have an event here?” »

Such was the genesis of last weekend’s inaugural Northern Credit Union Mixed Doubles Open, hosted at NCUCC, a tournament that welcomed 17 teams to town (due to a Thursday night withdrawal): nine from South Ontario, seven from Northern Ontario, a team from Japan, as well as the Franey-Weldon combo who made the trip from Colorado.

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If Daoust and Paquette thought their travel arrangements to La Belle Province were daunting, consider for a moment a schedule in which your flight leaves Denver Thursday evening and arrives in Detroit around midnight, after which you rent a car and make the eight-hour drive . in Sudbury with just enough time to relax for a few hours before playing your first game mid-afternoon on Friday.

“We looked at the three events that were happening this weekend and put them into Google Maps,” Franey explained, shortly after his team was eliminated in the quarterfinals with an 8-3 loss to the St. Thomas duo of Scott McDonald and Laura Neil Sunday morning. “They were all doable, but for us the most important thing is the points generator.”

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Fortunately, Daoust had succeeded in securing the new event a place on the Ontario Mixed Curling Tour calendar, as well as achieving Level 3 status as a World Curling Federation qualifying competition, creating a appeal to U.S.-based teammates who only started curling in their mid-20s.

“In the United States, we might only have four mixed doubles events all year that are tour events,” Franey said. “In Canada, almost every province has its own tour with seven, eight or nine events.

“For us, it’s so much easier to figure out what weekends we have free and what events are happening that weekend.”

Easier, but not necessarily easy.

Yet it was a factor that played an important role in the organizational model Daoust created to create a curling talent draw that would generate a snowball effect, with entries accumulating based on who else came along. registered from the start – along with a few other keys. items.

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“It was mostly the timing, the scheduling of the event,” he said. “If you’re too far from other events, there’s not much incentive for big traveling teams to attend. The Japanese team (Chiaki Matsumura and Yasumasa Tanida won the Open with an 8-3 victory over Sudbury native Megan Smith and her Newmarket partner Doug Thomson in the final) will head straight to another event on the weekend -next end.

To boot, there’s apparently an element of reciprocity in place, as semi-finalists Scott McDonald and Laura Neil (lost 8-7 to Matsumura-Tanida in the semi-final) explained while making the six-hour journey from south of London to Nickel. City.

“David and Manon do a lot of events in southern Ontario, so you want to come and support their event,” said McDonald, a two-time Brier participant who was first drawn to the mixed doubles match at the request for his home St. Thomas Curling Club and his interest in hosting a mixed doubles tournament a few years ago.

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“He did a great job putting this together and the ice was fantastic – and it gives us an opportunity to get some points,” McDonald continued. “Northern Ontario is curling country. It’s cool to go to a new place and see a new club.

Like so many longtime curlers, McDonald felt a certain attraction to the mixed doubles game that differs from the traditional four-man version.

“We got to the final of our first event and found the dynamics were very different,” he suggested. “In mixed doubles, there is nowhere to hide.

“You can’t remove one end and just run the stones up and down and dump them out. You have to be ready to make those precise shots on the first shot.

And, as a husband and wife team, the team currently ranked 34th in the country also benefits from the communication aspect that is essential when dealing with only two curlers per team.

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“We have to be really honest with each other,” McDonald said. “When you don’t throw a broom, you don’t get feedback to know whether you’re hitting your target or not. It can sometimes be a little humiliating to admit that you didn’t throw as well as you thought you would, but all the information you give is intended to try to help your partner succeed on their next shot.

It’s all part of the process of learning more about a version of curling that is still in its infancy, whether competitors come from near or far to Sudbury.

“One of the reasons we like coming here, apart from the points, is that we have good games against good competition – and you learn more in these games,” said Franey, as he and Weldon were preparing to hit the road, their flight early Monday morning from Detroit awaiting them.

“It’s like we’re curling babies compared to some of the players we’ve played against here. »

Randy Pascal’s That Sudbury Sports Guy column appears regularly in the Sudbury Star.

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