Everyone likes to have a little more spending money come Christmas time – and curlers are no different.

Thanks to a pair of recent bonspiel victories, some local rock throwers have managed to pocket a little extra dough for those special deals on Amazon coming up in the weeks ahead.

Back for a second year with skip Danielle Inglis, vice and long-time Sudbury resident Kira Brunton (now living in Ottawa) teamed with Calissa Daly (second) and Cassandra de Groot (lead) for their second win of the year, topping the field at the Curling Stadium Spiel in North Bay last weekend.

Despite matching offsetting round robin wins against Sarah Bailey (8-2) and Lauren Mann (9-0) with losses to Chelsea Brandwood (6-1) and Hollie Duncan (4-2) in pool play, the Ottawa-based rink managed to turn things around in the elimination games, putting together a three-game streak.

Both a 6-5 quarter-final victory over Brandwood and a 5-4 squeeker over Hailey Armstrong would require the eventual champions to steal in the last end to emerge triumphant, a scenario that quasi-duplicated itself in the championship affair opposite Team Duncan when they took a 3-2 lead into the eighth end, adding the steal to seal the deal.

“We knew going into the playoffs that we were going to have to play really well because we finished round robin play at 2-2 – which meant that we had no hammer to start any of the playoff games,” said Brunton. “We had to battle hard to flip the hammer.”

With the only tinkering in the roster coming with the insertion of Calissa Daly to replace retired front-ender Cheryl Krevaziuk, the Inglis foursome were confident that there was a great deal of promise that lie in the 2023-2024 season for their team.

“It was just realizing how close we were to some of the top teams, playing a few of them and having some really close games,” said Brunton. “Also, we knew how much of a jump we made with CTRS (Canadian Team Ranking System) points and World Curling Tour points. We wanted to continue to build on that and keep climbing up the ranks.”

Team Inglis hit the ground running, capturing the Summer Series bonspiel in Saint-Félicien (PQ) at the end of August and were the top ranked team coming into the event hosted at the Granite Club that featured a twelve-team field. “We know the girls that we were playing against really well,” said Brunton.

“We know that they are super strong shooters so we had to come out firing basically every game.”

With a full season of working together on the back-end, Inglis and Brunton are looking to take that chemistry to a whole new level as they begin to hit playdown schedules and such. “I think we’re able to be super honest with each other,” Brunton noted as a key to the relationship. “She (Danielle) obviously has a lot of experience in the game and I feel like I’m learning a lot from her.”

“We feed off each other really well.”

There is certainly a great deal more familiarity with the back-end tandem of Team Horgan as the local lads (Tanner and Jake) took home the prize money at the Curl Mesabi Classic hosted in Eveleth (Minnesota) two weekends ago.

“We haven’t had a full season in the back end together since 2018,” noted Jake, his team preparing for another event this weekend. “We’ve played the odd event together but we haven’t had a string of tournament together to build off each other.”

Now 23 years of age (Tanner is 25), fair to say that much has changed since the team vice last shared in-house wisdom with his older sibling with this kind of regularity while still in his teenage years.

“It’s a totally different dynamic,” stated Jake. “We’re both quite a bit more mature. It’s definitely a lot calmer back there. I wouldn’t call us a calm back end by any means – but we’re getting there,” he laughed.

Team Horgan also had some off-season turnover to contend with as the front-end of Ian McMillan and Scott Chadwick were brought in to replace the veteran duo of Darren Moulding and Colin Hodgson who were instrumental in helping the Horgans to qualify for the 2023 Tim Horton’s Brier in London last spring.

The only Canadian entry in the 12-team field, the Horgan quartet would run the table with pool play victories over Greg Delich (10-0), Wesley Wendling (10-4), Jed Brundidge (8-1) and Scott Dunnam (9-3) before taking down Ethan Sampson in the semis (8-2) and Daniel Casper (5-4) in the championship tilt.

Beyond the ability to avoid some of their Canadian rivals all while earning a purse that grew incrementally more attractive simply because it was in U.S. currency came some pragmatic considerations to entering this particular competition for the Horgan siblings who actually curled out of Manitoba for a few years.

“Our second (Ian McMillan) lives in Winnipeg so we all flew in there and were able to drive straight down from there,” said Jake. “We just used his truck all weekend.”

And what a weekend it was, with the NOCA affiliated squad feeling as good about this six game set as any that they had played this year.

“We went through an entire event without having a below average game – which is really hard to do playing six games in a span of three days,” said Horgan. “We were always focused and always dialed in the whole weekend.”

Ironically, both Team Inglis and Team Horgan are back in Manitoba this weekend, Morris (MB) to be specific, site of the Dekalb Superspiel. The international men’s field includes a nice mix of entries from both sides of the border, as well as the Hongkeon Kim rink from South Korea while Inglis and company may be butting heads with the likes of Clancy Grandy from B.C., multi Scotties participant Krista McCarville from Northern Ontario as well as the Swiss rinks skipped by Corrie Huerlimann and Michele Jaeggi.