News Masters

Masters Mondays is your weekly rewind through the history of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling event leading up to the start of the season.

This week’s Masters Monday is a flashback within a flashback as we return to January 2008 and Team Kevin Koe’s retro red sweaters.

With other teams sporting modern-looking polo shirts and polyester, the team of Koe, fourth Blake MacDonald, second Carter Rycroft and lead Nolan Thiessen kicked it old school with a vintage set of red sweaters and patterned grey pants to stand out from the crowd. Keep in mind this was before Team Ulsrud started wearing Loudmouth pants, in fact, the Norwegian rink played in the 2008-09 Masters wearing plain old regular black pants.

The story behind the sweaters goes that MacDonald found the set for sale on eBay prior to the season and snatched them up. The sweaters, which just so happened to fit the team, actually have ties to the curling world as the label inside indicated they were part of the Hec Gervais collection. Gervais, a two-time Brier winner and a world champion, lent his name to a clothing wear line back in the day.

All they needed were the grey pants to complete the look, although the story of the slacks is quite simple: they were purchased at Lululemon.

Teams at the Masters also wore patches in honour of the late, great sportscaster Don Wittman, who passed away earlier that month.

Although the sweaters drew the initial attention, their play on the ice kept the focus on them as they rolled through to the final. Unfortunately their luck would end there as they lost to then reigning world champion (and defending Masters champ) Glenn Howard.

It actually turned out to be the first of three consecutive seasons where Team Howard defeated Team Koe in the Masters final.