Olympic quest continues with daughter

Desjardins duo making noise at mixed doubles

in Portage la Prairie, Man.

So, while it may have surprised some to see the Desjardins team come out of the gate with a 2-0 record Tuesday — beating Olympian Dawn McEwen and her husband Mike in one game — the two saw it as just a day at the office.

“We practise a lot,” Robert said. “I’m one of the rare guys who started playing mixed doubles the first year that Curling Canada decided to have a championship. They made the first ever mixed doubles Canadian championship and I played in it and I won it.”

The reality check came quickly for the Desjardins duo, however. They lost their next two games — including a 7-6 squeaker to Nancy Martin and Catlin Schneider Wednesday morning — to fall to 2-2 and were back on the ice in the evening against Shannon Birchard and Jason Gunnlaugson.

It’ll take more than a few losses to derail the dream.

“When I saw they were making the Olympic process and bonspiels with (Grand) Slammers in it, I had to do a mortgage on my house to keep playing this thing,” Robert said. “I wanted to make sure that there’s no way they could say ‘Robert, we don’t have room for you in this spiel.’ I want to make sure that I’m in the way.”

For Emilie, this has been quite the experience already. She can barely believe she’s on the ice with many of her curling heroes, like 2014 Olympic champion Jones.

“It’s weird because I was watching her on TV when I was five,” Emilie said. “So now, playing against her, it’s weird but it’s great. I feel lucky to be part of this tournament.”

The round-robin portion of the mixed doubles trials continues through Thursday and eight of the eighteen teams will advance to the playoff round, which starts Friday night.

There were three unbeaten teams remaining in the round robin through three of six Wednesday draws and nine draws overall.

Brett Gallant of St. John’s, N.L., and Jocelyn Peterman of Calgary were alone in first place in Pool A at 4-0 after picking up a 10-2 win over Martin and Schneider on Wednesday afternoon.

In Pool B, Dana Ferguson and Brendan Bottcher of Edmonton were also at 4-0 after a 6-5 win over Chelsea Carey of Calgary and Colin Hodgson of Winnipeg, while Laura Crocker of Edmonton and Geoff Walker of St. John’s moved to 4-0 with a 10-4 win over Nicole Westlund Stewart and Tyler Stewart of Kitchener, Ont.