11 years later

As we roll into Day 2 at the 2009 Brier, it's interesting to look at something I've gone into earlier in this blog, junior champions having success at the adult level.
Specifically, there is one world junior championship squad that has its fingerprints all over this Brier and the
past couple Briers as well.
What's interesting is that four members of that championship squad is at this Brier, as well as the 2008 Brier, but on three different rinks.
The skip from that rink is on Kevin Martin's Alberta rink — specifically, John Morris. The third and lead from that rink (not second and lead as erroneously identified this morning by TSN's Cathy Gauthier) were Craig Savill (this year's Ford Hot Shot) and Brent Laing, the lead and second respectively on Glenn Howard's Ontario rink.
And the guy everybody forgets about was the fifth on that championship team (dramatic pause), a very young looking Brad Gushue, who, of course, is the skip of Newfoundland and Labrador. Yes, Brad never lived in Ontario, where the Morris rink was from, but as the young skip at the 1998 Canadian Karcher Juniors, whose team finished 4-8 although he was ranked fourth among skips, he was chosen by the Ontario crew to join them in Thunder Bay at the worlds.
One interesting side note that is to get to that world championship, Morris and co. had to win a tie-breaker over New Brunswick's Rob Heffernan, a semifinal over Manitoba's Mike McEwen and then a final over Carter Rycroft of Alberta. The interesting part is that the second on the team that lost to Morris is the same man playing second with him now, Marc Kennedy.
Besides Kennedy, Morris, Gushue, Savill and Laing, there are a couple of other competitors from that Canadian junior championship held in Calgary (coincidence, I think so) in 1998.
Jamie Koe, the skip for the Northwest Territories in 1998 is back to Calgary as the NWT/Yukon skip and Andrew Gibson, the lead for Nova Scotia in 1998 is the second for Mark Dacey's Nova Scotia rink this week.