Annex wheelchair curler wins fifth Ontario title.
Chris Rees, left, and his rink mates Carl Bax, coach Paul Emmett, Alec Denys and Shauna Petrie won the provincial Dominion Wheelchair championship at the Toronto Cricket Club on Feb. 4. The team now heads to the national Dominion Wheelchair curling championships in Edmonton in March.
Photo/COURTESY
After a two-year absence, Annex resident Chris Rees has earned a trip back to the national wheelchair curling championships, which will be held in Edmonton March 20 to 27, for what will mark his fifth appearance.
With a national bronze and silver medal already in the trophy case, the skip, based out of the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club, will try to complete what would be an impressive medal collection.
"I'm still hoping to win that elusive gold," he said in a phone interview from his Annex home.
He credited 'home ice' as a factor in his team's 8-3 win on Feb. 4 over former teammate and friend Ken Gregory, now based out of Bradford, who was the 2009 champion. In the preliminary round, the Rees team also beat 2010 champion Bruce Cameron 7-6.
"Home ice advantage was a significant advantage this year," said Rees. "I was able to sleep at home, hot showers, comfortable."
For Rees it marked his fifth provincial title - the last four of them as his own skip (and the one before that as vice-skip for Gregory).
The current title, however, was with a mostly new team at a new club. His previous three provincial championships were out of the Leaside Curling Club in 2006/07/08, with the only holdover from that team being his 'third', Carl Bax from Peterborough.
His whole "front end" is new - Alec Denys, also from Peterborough and Shauna Petrie from Mississauga (at second and lead, respectively).
Rees is thrilled to have another shot at national gold.
"I had a good chance three years ago, you know I had the (winning) points in the house and it came down to last rock, and Jim Armstrong, who is the current skip of Team Canada, he made the shot and it won the game.
"It was heartbreaking because I did everything I could and I wasn't in charge of my own destiny at that point because he had last rock.
"He made the shot and he won the nationals. I won a silver."
The year he earned national bronze was also memorable - at least until he hit the playoff round.
"I slipped in the playoffs. I went from going undefeated to winning a bronze," he said.
Rees said he had to rebuild his team a couple of years ago after a couple of team members and the coach departed.
He moved from Leaside to the Toronto Cricket club primarily because the scheduling worked better in terms of ice time.
His team plays in a weekly mixed (able bodied) league at the Toronto club.
Asked how he's doing, he said "we're winning our mixed league at the moment."
Not bad for someone who just started curling six years ago when the above-noted Gregory urged him to give it a try.
"The first day out I couldn't get the rock half way down the sheet of ice and I thought, well, this isn't going to work. But you know toward the end of the hour, I realized I'm getting it a little bit further... I was hooked within the first couple of weeks I tried it."
In a short time, he had mastered the game better than most able-bodied curlers could do in a lifetime.
In fact, that's one of the perks of the game - that he can compete, and usually beat, able-bodied opponents.
"The game itself is the same whether you're disabled or not, that's what I love about it."
He explained he is "what's classified as a C-5/6 complete quadraplegic which means I'm paralyzed in all four limbs and I can't actually hold on to a stick because I wouldn't be able to wiggle my fingers."
The solution?
"I actually duct tape the stick to my hand and I'm the only one that does it."
Other than the special stick the athletes use to launch the stone, he said there are really only two other differences:
• "we throw from a stationary position (the wheelchair); we're not sliding out on the ice;
• "there's no sweeping at all...It just forces you to be a little more accurate."
Rees has lived in Toronto for the last 15 years, and the past two years in the Annex.
His day job is at the CBC: "I'm a video editor and I edit the news."
And when he's not curling: "Sail in the summer. Love to travel, all that sort of stuff," he said.
Catch him at the nationals at www.curling.ca/championships/wheelchair/