A healthy dose of Mike
Mike McEwen admits he’s still not 100 per cent recovered from health issues that knocked the stuffing out of him this winter.
“Getting there,” he smiled, on the eve of the Championship Pool playoffs where he has his Team Wild Card out of Winnipeg ready for the stretch run at the Tim Hortons Brier. “I was maybe in the 80s when we started last Friday, and I’m creeping into the 90s. But I’m not there yet.”
But the 90s is way, way better than the health situation McEwen was in not that long ago when he was hospitalized during the Manitoba provincial playdowns in January with a severe case of chicken pox.
It was a particularly nasty case, and McEwen was hooked up intravenously and made to gulp down meds during his three-day hospital stay, forcing his teammates — third B.J. Neufeld, second Matt Wozniak and lead Denni Neufeld — to carry on without him.
It was just another chapter in the hard luck story that is McEwen, a guy who lost five Manitoba provincial finals before finally blasting through to qualify for the Brier in 2016. He repeated his Manitoba title last year but lost his sixth provincial final this January to Reid Carruthers, and a lot of that had to do with McEwen’s illness. He staggered out of sick bay to throw third rocks in the final, but there was going to be no storybook finish.
The bad luck that had doged McEwen for so many years was back again.
But perhaps the clouds have lifted, once and for all. McEwen got a huge break in the suddendeath wild card final on Friday evening against fellow Winnipegger Jason Gunnlaughson, who ‘picked’ with a crucial shot in the 10th end, opening the door for a McEwen win.
And now, after a severe head cold bagged him at the start of the Brier, he’s almost back to his old self at the most critical part of the Brier.
“My energy levels feel fine,” said McEwen, who took a break and went to Mexico for a ”forced relaxation” after the provincials. “I was probably more affected by the head cold. So I’m feeling a lot better.”
And as Mike goes, so does his team out of the Fort Rouge Club in Winnipeg.
“I liked what I saw the last two games from us,” he said. “I thought we made some pretty precise shots which wasn’t the case early in the round robin. So we’re going to have to do much the same. If we run into a hot skip, we may have to play even better.”
McEwen knows the stretch drive will be tough.
“We’re going to be playing teams that have winning records. It’s going to be hard,” he said. “Nothing new. It’s like being in a trials phase.”