Nick Drews has won a lot of curling games in Manitoba.
Last month, he won games in a different country – the United States.
Drews skipped his team (which hasn’t played a lot of years in the game) to the 10-team Minnesota State Men’s Club Curling Championship in Brainerd, Minnesota late last month.
“I think we were the least experienced and definitely the youngest at third,” Drews explained, adding he had to bide his time to become a skip. “Teams were 50s and older, a couple of 40s and maybe one other skip in his 30s so we were definitely the least experienced and probably the youngest. I really like playing with this team, they all want to learn and get better. It was a fun event.”
Drews was 3-1 in pool play and the top two teams in the two pools qualified for the playoffs. Drews was the second seed in Pool A and then won playoff games 6-4 and 8-3.
He said their rink played very well when it counted.
“(The final game) was nice because we stole three in the second end and the hitting ability from my team was pretty good – it’s a strength of ours to fend off any chances that they have. They had to take some chances and we eventually ran away with it.”
Drews and his rink have now advanced to the national championship, which will be held April 2-6 in Fargo, North Dakota. The CBS Sports Network is going to be televising the event. That’s big time.
If they play well, Drews and his rink have a good opportunity to win the whole thing.
“We are really looking forward to playing at nationals,” Drews said. “That was our goal, playing for something bigger than just our club.”
The U.S. isn’t new to Drews as he came down to attend school at the University of Minnesota in 2014. He won the title at the U.S College Curling Championship in his third season of playing in it.
