Doubling down inside the bubble
Kerri Einarson, Brad Gushue team up for national mixed doubles championship
CALGARY -- If there’s an upside to Kerri Einarson not having a women’s world curling championship to play in this month, it’s the chance to win another Canadian championship.
Einarson and reigning Canadian men’s champion skip Brad Gushue were among the 35 duos named Tuesday to the national mixed doubles championship.
The March 18-25 tournament will be the third of four Curling Canada events held in a spectator-free, controlled environment in Calgary to prevent the spread of the COVID19 virus.
Einarson, third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard and lead Briane Meilleur, who claimed a second straight national women’s title Sunday, will return to Calgary to team up with male partners for mixed doubles.
While Einarson and company would have preferred representing Canada on the world stage March 20-28 in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, mixed doubles offers the chance to at least keep curling.
When the World Curling Federation called off the women’s championship Feb. 8, Einarson said she sent Gushue a tongue-incheek text saying “well, good news, I guess the worlds is cancelled so I guess I’m playing mixed doubles.”
Gushue and several other men curling in the national championship, starting Friday at WinSport’s Markin MacPhail Centre, will stay on in Calgary for $150,000 Home Hardware Mixed Doubles Curling Championship.
The mixed doubles field also includes twotime national champions Brett Gallant, who is Gushue’s second, and Jocelyn Peterman, as well as 2014 Olympic women’s curling champion skip Jennifer Jones and her husband Brent Laing.
John Morris, who won Olympic mixed doubles gold with Kaitlyn Lawes in 2018, replaced partner Rachel Homan with Danielle
Schmiemann because Homan is just weeks away from giving birth.
The top 12 teams emerging from five pools advance to playoffs.
The winner earns $50,000 in prize money and represents Canada in the 2021 world mixed doubles championship, if there is one. The World Curling Federation has yet to announce a date and location.
The world championship would determine seven of the 10 countries competing in mixed doubles in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The pandemic wiping out the majority of the curling season posed qualification challenges for mixed doubles as it did for the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and Tim Hortons Brier.
Fourteen pairs are provincial or territorial champions and another 14 gained entry via Curling Canada’s mixed doubles rankings based on their results between March 2019 and March 2020.
The latter group of 14 had to play a minimum of two mixed doubles events during that time frame.
The seven other teams in the field didn’t compete this season because of the pandemic, but had declared to Curling Canada their intention to curl mixed doubles in 2020-21.
They qualified via a ranking system based on each athlete’s top three results with their four-player teams, combined with their partner’s, in 2019-20. Gushue and Einarson were among those seven whose ranking under that criteria placed them fifth.
Curling Canada wants to keep mixed doubles options open for the country’s top curlers who spend the majority of their competitive seasons with their four-player teams.
Morris and Lawes had played only a handful of games together before winning Olympic gold in 2018.
Two-time national women’s champion skip Chelsea Carey and Colin Hodgson, who plays lead for Mike McEwen, objected Tuesday on social media about their exclusion from the field. Curling Canada responded that they didn’t play mixed doubles together in the 201920 time frame, nor did they rank high enough to be among the seven; Carey and Hodgson are ranked 10th.
“The United States vs. Billie Holiday,” “Minari,” “Da 5 Bloods” and “One Night in Miami” are among the films AARP is honouring at its annual
Movies for Grownups Awards, the non-profit organization said Thursday.
Director Lee Daniels’ “The
United States vs. Billie Holiday,” starring Andra Day as the jazz singer, was named best picture, while the Korean American family drama “Minari” got best intergenerational film. Spike Lee’s Vietnam-themed “Da 5 Bloods” picked up best buddy picture and Regina King’s “One Night in Miami . . .,” about the fictional meeting of Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Cassius Clay and Jim Brown, got best ensemble.
“We focus on films made by and for grownups,” said Tim Appelo, the film and television critic for AARP. “When we started this a couple of decades ago, it was hard to find first movies about people of our age. I’m very pleased to see that we’ve got a bumper crop of movies and performances to choose from this year.”
George Clooney is being honoured this year with the career achievement award. The 59year-old both directed and acted in his most recent film, “The Midnight Sky.”
“He’s the Cary Grant of our day, but he’s also a fast-rising director,” Appelo said. “He’s perfect because he’s just a slam dunk argument against ageism.”
Jodie Foster too is singled out for her supporting performance in “The Mauritanian,” for which she also won the Golden Globe this week. Appelo said that the 58-year-old has said that she’s glad to be her age and is looking forward to playing characters in their 60s and beyond.
“That’s a big theme of ours, that life opens up after you turn 50,” Appelo said.
Aaron Sorkin is a double honoree for writing and directing “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” The top acting awards went to Sophia Loren, for “The Life Ahead,” and Anthony Hopkins, for “The Father.”
“The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” are two films Appelo said are particularly significant because of their historical value to a 50-plus audience. He also noted that this year included several important and nuanced depictions of Alzheimer’s, including in “The Father” and in “Supernova,” with Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci, which was named best grownup love story.
HOMEWOOD, Ala. — Liza Scott, 7, started a lemonade stand at her mom’s bakery last summer so she could buy some frills like toys and sequined high-heel shoes. The bouncy little girl is still in business months later, yet the money is going toward something entirely different: surgery on her brain.
Last month, doctors determined a series of seizures that Liza began suffering were caused by cerebral malformations that needed repair, said her mother, Elizabeth Scott. Always eager to help out and with an eye toward entrepreneurship after a childhood spent around a small business, the little girl volunteered to help raise money for her upcoming operation.
Located near the cash register of Savage’s Bakery in suburban Birmingham, her stand of bright pink and yellow wooden crates offers lemonade for a quarter, plus other treats. But people are putting in a lot more as word spreads of her medical condition and her attitude.
“I’ve got a $20 bill, and a $50 bill and a $10 bill and a $5 bill and a $100 bill,” Liza said Tuesday as she counted donations from the morning.
Liza was still in the hospital after suffering two major seizures when she came up with the idea to help out with the stand, said her mom, who also has a preschool-age boy.
“I told her, ‘You don’t have to do that,’” Elizabeth Scott said. “There’s no expectation of her doing anything to help pay the bills. I’m a single mom, I take care of my kids on my own.”
Yet Liza wanted to help, and she has. Her little stand has made more than $12,000 in a few days — nearly all through donations.
“She likes being part of the team. This is something she can really take ownership of,” Scott said.
While Liza’s story has warmed plenty of hearts, some are outraged over the idea that a child facing brain surgery would feel a need to raise funds for her own care. The story is yet another sign that the U.S. health system is broken beyond repair and driving families into bankruptcy, critics say.
Despite having good insurance through the popular bakery she runs with her father, Elizabeth Scott could quickly see that she was
still going to be responsible for some “pretty exorbitant” expenses. So, she also set up an online fundraiser.
“Just one week in the hospital and the ambulance rides is more than my monthly salary, and that’s without the surgery and travel expenses,” she said. “I can’t fund that by myself, and we have a business to support.”
Friends, family and others who have been touched by Liza’s story have already donated more than $300,000.
A bubbly little girl who likes Barbie dolls, dressing up — and lemonade — Liza hadn’t shown any signs of major health problems until Jan. 30, her mom said.
“She had a massive seizure at 5 in the morning and it lasted like 45 minutes,” said Elizabeth Scott. Another one occurred hours later. It was a few days before tests revealed Liza had three malformations that were both causing the seizures and posing a risk of rupture that could lead to a stroke or other problems.
Now on medication, Liza was quickly accepted as a patient at Boston Children’s Hospital, where a representative said Dr. Ed Smith, a neurosurgeon, and Dr. Darren Orbach, an interventional radiologist, will be part of a team set to operate Monday. The family flew to Boston on Thursday, and Liza could need follow-up visits into her 30s, her mother said.
Liza said she enjoys helping with her stand, where she makes the lemonade and puts donations in a big jar. “It’s better than just begging,” she said.
Temporarily out of school because of her condition, the girl is spending a lot of time at the bakery running the stand and playing with her dolls. A whirlwind of energy, she runs from one spot to the next, climbs atop a table in an empty room and swings upside down on a handrail as her mother speaks to a well-wisher.
In a quiet moment, Liza said she is trying not to think too much about what she called “my brain thingy.”