Curling stories

In High School, Kelly teamed up with some very talented boys that won a few games.

He played played with Paul Gowsell, Neil Houston, Glen Jackson in 75 and 76.  

The team was reconfigured in 77 as two of the boys were too old to play as juniors, and the other two were too young to play as men.  In 77 and 78 Paul and Kelly recruited John Ferguson and Doug MacFarlane.

They had some success:

• 1975 - Canadian Schoolboy Championships (Edmonton, Alberta)
• 1976 - World Junior Curling Championships (Aviemore, Scotland)
• 1977 - Canadian Junior Championships (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
• 1978 - World Junior Championships (Grindelwald, Switzerland)

In 79 the original team re-formed and they toured around western Canada (and elsewhere) entering and winning cash bonspiels.  In 1980, they represented Alberta in the Brier (Canadian Curling Championships) finishing third.


Over those years they played hard, and probably partied harder.  They had fun.

Here are a couple of my favourite stories from back in the day.

Can sleep anywhere

At the Canadian Schoolboy Championships in Edmonton Kelly and Neil shared a room.  In the night Kelly got up to investigate a knock at the door (or maybe he went sleepwalking).  He managed to lock himself out of the hotel room wearing nothing but his undies.  As I remember the story, one of the coaches found him leaning against the hotel room door, on his feet, but sound asleep.

Pizza

The pizza story seems to have almost legendary status.  As I heard it told, the boys had qualified to play in the final at a cash-spiel in Winnipeg.  They were scheduled to play the final 30 minutes after winning their semi-final game.  The cafeteria was swamped as 1000+ fans all wanted a coffee and a something to eat.  The boys didn't have time to line up for cafeteria food, and the organisers wouldn't delay the start of the game as they had a big crowd that wanted to see some action.

So the boys ordered pizza and had it delivered during the game.  The pizza delivery guy walked down the rink in front of 1000 spectators and handed over the box.  The boys paid and ate their fill between shots.  Paul even offered the opposing skip a slice.

The Gowsell team went on to win the game, and the $10,000 prize.  The opposing skip (Larry McGrath) claims he lost because one of his stones picked up an olive and stopped short.