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Steve Laycock’s team disbanding after season

It’s the end of the line for Team Laycock.

The Saskatoon squad, who recently represented Saskatchewan on home ice at the Tim Hortons Brier in Regina, announced Wednesday on social media they will be disbanding at the end of the season.

“As many teams do after a four year Olympic cycle, Team Laycock recently sat down to discuss the future of the team and the future of each player,” the team said in a media release. “We concluded that the team will dissolve at the conclusion of the 2018 season. Each of us will explore new opportunities in attempts to assemble a team which builds toward the next Olympics in 2022.”

Steve Laycock and lead Dallan Muyres started playing together in 2010 on Pat Simmons’s club before branching out the following season. Muyres’s brother, Kirk Muyres, and Colton Flasch came on board at third and second, respectively, in 2012. They won three consecutive SaskTel Tankard titles from 2014-16 and earned bronze at the Brier in 2015.

Flasch left the team last year to skip his own team with two-time Canadian junior champion Matt Dunstone coming over from Winnipeg. The team switched up the batting order prior to December’s Canadian Olympic curling trials moving Dunstone to fourth and sliding Laycock over to third (while still calling the game) and Kirk Muyres into second.

Team Laycock won their fourth SaskTel Tankard title in five seasons in February defeating Team Flasch in the provincial final. After a 0-2 start in the Brier, Team Laycock picked up the pace to make it into the championship pool where they finished with a 6-5 round-robin record.

“The team had many success stories on the ice,” they added in the statement. “The most recent was our Saskatchewan Provincial Tankard Championship which presented us with the opportunity to showcase our skills at a home province Brier in Regina. Winning this year, also represented four provincial titles for this team in the last five years. Previous to that we were the first team in Saskatchewan history to win three straight provincial titles with the same four players.”

Their best result in the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling during the past Olympic cycle was a runner-up finish on their home-province ice at the 2014 Canadian Open in Yorkton.