Matt Dunstone captures 2020 SaskTel Tankard

Matt Dunstone’s rink from the Highland Curling Club in Regina captured their first SaskTel Tankard with a 4-2 win over Saskatoon’s Kirk Muyres.

Dunstone took the long road to get to the final, playing three straight must-win games to claim the provincial title after losing both the A-side and B-side finals earlier in the event.

In the first end, Muyres made a tricky draw for a single with a Dunstone rock on the four-foot behind cover.

After two blank ends, Dunstone was able to find an opening to score a deuce, giving his rink the 2-1 lead.

That lead would hold until the sixth, when Muyres made another difficult draw for one. Dunstone rocks had the top of the house sealed off to make the draw that much more difficult.

There were two more blank ends in the seventh and eighth ends, but in the ninth, Dunstone made a soft hit to score two, giving him the 4-2 advantage.

In the tenth, Dunstone was able to run Muyres out of riocks, giving him his first Tankard win as a skip.

Dunstone said this caps a week of strong play from his team.

“Even in our losses, we felt we played really well. We left a couple shots out there obviously, both of our losses the teams we played played some really good curling so there wasn’t too much to be upset about,” We were confident enough in how we were playing, and just kept trucking with it. If it’s meant to be, it was going to be.”

Dunstone said the competition between his team and the Muyres rink has helped both teams get better this season.

“It’s give and take with us and I think it’s great,” Dunstone said. “I think to be a Brier champion you need that in your province, and I think it’s a great little thing we got going on here, and I hope both us just continue to get that much better.”

However, third Braeden Moskowy said their work is not done.

“We built this team to win the Brier, we haven’t hit that, we’ve put that out there from day one. We want to be the guys that bring that Brier Tankard back to Saskatchewan, it’s been way too long,” Muskowy said. “40 years, that’s far too long, there’s been way too many good teams and good players, so for it to be 40 years, that’s just too long and we want to be the guys to change that.”

The Tim Hortons Brier will begin on Febraury 29th in Kingston, Ontario.

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