Few rocks in the road

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

With a team focus on the 2010 Olympic trials, Craig Burgess of Berwick says this season has gone from quiet preparations to “playing with the big guys.”

Burgess curls with the Shawn Adams rink out of Halifax’s Mayflower club. They’re past provincial Tankard winners, finalists at the national Brier and made a good run through the 2006 Olympic trials. They know what they need to do to get to the top.

“We started this season mid- to late September, and we’d planned a light schedule - then we won Gander.”

The Don Wells bonspiel gave them some cash in their pocket and a top-18 national ranking but, more importantly, a qualifying spot for the Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 $100,000 BDO Classic Canadian Open in Quebec City.

“That got us excited,” Burgess says.

The rink had planned four tournaments this fall, but dropped one to head for Quebec City. There is a complicated formula of points, rankings and title wins over the next year curling teams who want spots in the 2010 trials need to work to their advantage.

“The top 10 will be in Edmonton in the fall of 2009,” Burgess says. Teams have to win two major titles - the Brier, the Canada Cup or Players’ Championship series events - for a sure spot, or have enough points to stay in the pack in the bottom half of that 10-team field.

That’s hard for the Adams’ team, Burgess says. At a Sackville tournament earlier this fall, they won $2,500 and picked up 3.5 points; Albertan two-time Brier winner and Olympic silver medallist from 2002 Kevin Martin won $25,000 and 36 points in the final of the BDO in Quebec - playing against Adams.

“We’ll never make the top five, just because of the tournaments we can get to, but, after the BDO final, we moved up four sports to 11th nationally,” Burgess says.

“A lot of those guys play every weekend against the top calibre teams. How do you do that? You quit your jobs - hah! It’s tough to compete at that level.”

Next up is the Ottawa Canada Cup qualifier December 13 to 16; Adams passed on the Atlantic tour championship, even though the team is ranked first.

“We made the decision not to go - we’ll take the weekend off, get fired up for Ottawa. Then we’ve got the Grand Slam in Port Hawkesbury Dec. 20 to 23.”

Also in the plan is making it through provincial play in the first go.

“If we don’t make it out of zones, we’ll have to pull out of the Grand Slam in Saskatchewan and go through a qualifier.”

That loses them another chance at rankings points and cash but, without a provincial title and its advancement to the Brier, there’s not much choice.

Burgess, Adams and Kelly Middlestadt and Paul Flemming agree: “our goal is to get the team to 2010 - after that, who knows?

“We have a lot of fun together, we carry on, we always have our discussions and our concerns. We could probably do a few things better, but we still get along great.

“This has been a nice start to our year.”