Nix clears first hurdle on road to 2017 Brier

The 61-year-old curler skipped a club team to a championship in Iqaluit, Nunavut, this past weekend, and just before the Tim Hortons Brier is held next March in St. John’s, N.L., Nix and his teammates will play a relegation round against Nova Scotia, P.E.I., and the Yukon in a round-robin format, with a chance to get into the main draw.
“Absolutely, it will be a long shot to get into the Brier,” Nix admitted. “But, we’ll go up there and play our three games and see what happens. Who knows?”
The top teams in the round robin would then play a one-game showdown, with the winner gaining a spot in Canada’s national men’s curling championship.
“Realistically, it’s going to be tough, but I’m excited because I’ve never done this before and it’s probably the only time I’ll ever do this,” said Nix, now back home in New Glasgow, where he will spend the next couple of months working on his game as much as he can.
He said he will soak in the experience of travelling to St. John’s to play in the relegation round, “playing on Brier ice,” and said his teammates are excited to be going.
“The guys from (Iqaluit) are happy as heck, so that’s a nice part of it, too.”
Nix received a call early last month from a friend, wanting to know if he’d be interested in skipping the Iqaluit team. After working out the details, he travelled to Nunavut last week, played a practice game with his brand new teammates and won two games to capture the club title at Iqaluit Curling Club, winning by scores of 9-5 and 8-7 in extra ends.Nix said he hopes to travel back to Iqaluit in February, where he will instruct at a curling camp, and hopes to get his teammates down here sometimes over the next couple of months to get in some practice games with them.
Other than that, “I’ll be practising on my own, same as I was doing before I went up there,” he said.