There was a time when it was the toughest rural zone to win in our province.

If you won Zone 1 and earned the right to compete at the Provincial Men’s Curling Championship, you accomplished something special.

The zone stretched from Winkler to Steinbach and from Emerson to La Salle.

And in between there was the Altona, Gretna, Carman, Morris, St. Jean, Dufrost and Roland Curling Clubs.

Chris Neufeld moved from Steinbach to Winkler in 1980 and played third for Henry Klassen.

They won the Zone in 1983.

“I had already curled with Vic Peters for a couple of years prior to coming to Winkler,” reminisced Neufeld shortly after watching his sons BJ & Denni along with Matt Wozniak defeat Richard Muntain Thursday morning at the 2018 Viterra Championship at the Winkler Centennial Arena. “I was a gung-ho avid player and I thought that Henry probably was more of a club player and when I looked around the club to see who I would probably like to play with or who I thought could get me to where I wanted to go, Henry was the guy. I was always pretty confident Henry could get the job done.”

Neufeld and Klassen along with lead Albert Klassen and second Rab Wiebe played in the 1983 Tankard in Winnipeg where they went on an impressive run before losing to eventual champion Lloyd Gunnlaugson going into the final four.

Soon after Neufeld would pack up the family and leave for Gimli where he established his bakery business.

Klassen, who also qualified for the Tankard in 1985 in Dauphin and in 1986 in Winnipeg, said that first Tankard in ‘83 with Neufeld was special.

“It was our first time in an arena setting and we played well. The ice wasn’t nearly as good as it is here in Winkler. The ice here looks fabulous. It wasn’t that good at the Winnipeg Arena. The atmosphere there - there were a lot of people watching. And the fact that we won a few games and did pretty good, that was real good.”

It wasn’t easy getting to the Tankard out of Zone 1.

Every curling club in the zone had a handful of top notch rock throwers.

Klassen had to deal with the likes of Art Mazinke, Jim Dewart, Harold Sawatzky, Dave Wiebe, Brian Recksiedler, Bill North, Wilf Peters, Doug Lintott and Danny Penner just to name a few.

“Back in those days you could have anywhere from 24 to 28 teams playing Zones and out of those teams you would have 16 teams that had a legitimate shot at winning it,” said Klassen. “You had to play good. You couldn’t afford to drop into the B side because then you played every draw and it just killed you. Which happened to us the one year. We lost our first game. We probably played the second best team in the Zone. We had a great game but lost, dropped to the B side and played every draw until the end of the weekend and we just ran out of gas on Sunday. That was a grind. Now you’ve got five teams playing for two spots or whatever. It’s a little different than it was back then.”

Henry Klassen has volunteered for Winkler’s three Provincial Championships -  the Mixed in 1997, the Scotties  in 2015 and this weeks Viterra Championship.

“There’s still some of the old guys that I played back then that are still playing,” Klassen said. “I actually had one guy come up to me in the Opening Ceremonies and said, ’I don’t know if you remember it but we played you the first game of the 1983 Tankard,’ and I’m going Holy Smokes and you’re still playing here and playing competitively.”

“The next thing is to see the next generation,” added Klassen. “Watching Chris’ boys play. Chris and Pearl have been good friends of ours for a long time and now to see their boys doing well and some of the boys that played juniors with my boys when they were playing juniors and to see them doing this well, it’s a great feeling to have. To see the fan support we’ve had here this week is just incredible.”


Connor Njegovan along with Ian McMillan, Alex Forrest and their skip Jason Gunnlaugson were eliminated Thursday


2018 Viterra Provincial Men's Curling Championship

@ Winkler
Friday, February 2nd
Draw #9   8:30 a.m.
A Side Qualifiers
Mike McEwen, Fort Rouge 7 Dennis Bohn, Assiniboine Memorial 5
Reid Carruthers, West St. Paul 10 David Bohn, Assiniboine Memorial 6
Travis Bale, Fort Rouge 6 Daniel Birchard, Pembina 2
Pat Simmons, Granite 6 William Lyburn, Assiniboine Memorial 2

Draw #10  12:15 p.m.
B Side
Terry McNamee, Brandon 7 Julien Leduc, Granite 2
Graham Freeman, Virden 11 Darryl Friesen, St. Vital 3
Steve Irwin, Brandon 6 Tyler Drews, Fort Rouge 5 (EE)
JT Ryan, Assiniboine Memorial 7 Kyle Foster, Arborg 6

Draw #11   4 p.m.
B Side Qualifiers

David Bohn 8 McNamee 3
Birchard 7 Freeman 3
Irwin 8 Lyburn 5
Ryan 9 Dennis Bohn 3

Draw # 12  7:45 p.m.
Playoff Round
Carruthers 8 Birchard 0
Bale 6 Bohn 2
Ryan 9 Simmons 5
McEwen 8 Irwin 2