North Bay’s second-largest curling event has come to a close.
After taking over Memorial Gardens for much of the week, the Masters wrapped up with two first time winners in Team Fleury and Team Dunstone taking home Women and Men’s titles respectively.
“I felt like we kept building momentum,” Skip Tracy Fleury said shortly after defeating Team Yoshimura. “We got a really good handle on the ice. My three teammates played really well which makes my job really easy. Just really proud of how they played this week.”
“It’s an amazing feeling. I have lost two finals before which was tough being so close, so to be able to pull it off is a big accomplishment.”
“It just kept going back to trying to enjoy this,” Skip Matt Dunstone said. “It was so easy with the crowd that we had here. You could tell they were having so much fun, it made it easy for us especially going into this final game. There are hundreds of other teams in the world that would do anything to be where we are.”
Both of the teams are first-time winners at a Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling event. Fleury took down Team Yoshimura 7-5, while Dunstone took down Newfoundland’s Team Gushue 8-5.
“It’s Brad Gushue, I don’t know what to tell you,” Dunstone explained. “He’s won 11 of these, 19 finals, more experience than all of us times five. You know he is going to pour pressure on you no matter what the score is, so we just had to stick with our guns.”
It was a homecoming of sorts for Fleury, as the curler was born and raised in nearby Sudbury. Locally, Fleury has won two “Summerspiels” at the Granite Club in North Bay.
“I don’t live too far from here so I definitely felt the crowd support, and had a lot of family and friends in the stands which meant a lot to me,” Fleury explained. “North Bay did such a fantastic event, they always do. They have hosted a couple of big events in the past and it is always a big success, so kudos to them on a fantastic event.”
Count Team Dunstone as fans of the event in North Bay as well, echoing Jennifer Jones in her assessment after the 2018 Women’s Worlds.
“A lot of the Slams we go to don’t have this kind of fan support. We’re lucky enough to play in a Slam with this amount of support, very knowledgeable fans as well. I have had many fans come up, say hi, you have conversations with them and that is what makes it fun for us.”
“Being able to play in front of 3,000 fans, it’s almost full every draw. That’s a dream for us curlers to be able to put on a show and to chat with people and hear some stories. Things like that make it that much better.”
“We’re going to enjoy this, but there is still a lot of work to do. It is only October and it is a very long season. This is fun, we’re never going to forget this moment, but a couple of days from now it is going to be business as usual.”
