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It’s been a grind all season for the Charlottetown-based Team Casey during their first year together

The rink of Adam Casey, Josh Barry, Anson Carmody and Robbie Doherty hit the road practically every weekend gaining experience and recognition on the World Curling Tour. Their efforts have paid off as they rose to 13th on the World Curling Tour’s year-to-date order of merit and recently gained a new sponsor in Travel Annex.

Team Casey also captured the P.E.I. Tankard but are now facing Yukon and Nova Scotia in the all-new pre-qualifier round for the final spot in the Tim Hortons Brier. P.E.I. has competed in the Brier every year since 1936 and Team Casey is focused on the road ahead to make sure that streak doesn’t come to an end.

“The pre-qualifier is just another hurdle, along the way to our ultimate goal of winning the Brier,” Casey said via e-mail. “We formed this team with that goal in mind and had knowledge of the status of the pre-qualifier going into the season. I think that will be an advantage to the team that gets through it. That team will have three games under their belts by the time the round robin gets underway.”

“We want to get off to a good start and maintain that intensity all week,” Doherty added. “We are in a unique situation with the pre-qualifier round, but feel we can use it to our advantage in many ways. It’s going to be a grind no doubt, but we’re not scared. We’ve turned some heads all year, and don’t plan on stopping now.”

The foursome have been finalists at three WCT events this season and competed in the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling’s National and Canadian Open events. While travelling practically coast to coast for events, it’s no wonder they caught the attention of Travel Annex. Parent company Annex Media Inc. is an official media partner of the WCT, creating video content for CurlingZone and Sportsnet, and produced the “Far From Home” video on Team Casey during the National.

“It’s the perfect time to get involved for some growing exposure, and after working on ‘Far From Home: Team Adam Casey’, I began to feel like there could be a mutually beneficial opportunity for both of us,” Travel Annex director Jesse Wachter explained in a press release. “Just like they say in the video, they need to get to more places to earn points on the World Curling Tour circuit. Their travel and accommodation costs are ridiculous and we know a thing or two about that.”

“As a growing travel start-up, we’ve partnered with tons of hotels and transportation providers over the last couple years and we can help these guys subsidize a lot of their costs with those connections,” Wachter added. “We have done videos for hotels in a lot of the places they need to go and we have a lot more that we want to shoot in the destinations they want to add to their schedule next season. In general, curling events coordinate with local tourist boards, restaurants and hospitality businesses, so it just makes sense to team up and trade off for the exposure to the entities we want to be attracting in the first place.”

Casey also said it’s a very unique sponsorship for the team and they’ve already seen positive results.

“Their production team is at a lot of our events as it is and now they are there to help us in any way possible,” Casey said in the press release. “Already we have benefited immensely from this partnership — it has allowed us to add events to our schedule and has made these events into more memorable experiences. In return, I hope we can grow awareness and show people what a remarkable company Travel Annex is.”

Although the sponsorship announcement came late in the curling year, Wachter has plans for the off-season that will help grow their partnership.

“We plan to document places to go, stay and eat throughout the Maritimes this summer and we couldn’t ask for better brand ambassadors who embody the principles of honesty and fun that we try to adhere to,” Wachter said. “We see this as a long-term partnership and an opportunity to work with a world class team that we want to help achieve greatness.”