What are the coaches' roles for Canada at curling worlds?

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Paul Webster is pumped to have the best place in the house at the 2025 BKT World Men’s Curling Championship.

Right there behind the home side, feeling every emotion with every shot made or missed by Canada’s Team Jacobs, such as was the case for Tuesday’s two wins — 8-6 over Sweden and 4-2 over Italy.

“Great seats, right?” said Webster, the decorated coach of the host nation’s talented rink at Temple Gardens Centre in Moose Jaw, Sask. “To be right there watching some of the best curling athletes in the world perform, that’s sort of the perk of being coach, I find.

“But being that close to these athletes is where you get really humbled and anxious,” Webster continued. “Sometimes you get like, ‘Holy … how am I supposed to help these guys out?’ Like, my role isn’t just to fill the bench. It’s actually what can I do to help?”

Simply put, whatever he can.

Not many understand what the role of the coaches in curling, especially when they’re teaming up with world-class athletes.

And Canada has a couple of bosses in Webster — the team coach from Calgary’s Glencoe Club — and Jeff Stoughton — Curling Canada’s national coach.

There’s also David Murdoch — the national body’s high performance director — and Renée Sonnenberg — Curling Canada’s analytics guru — all in the fold to help guide Brad Jacobs and his Canadian crew, hopefully, to the world crown this week in Saskatchewan.

WHO ARE THE COACHES?

• Paul Webster is making his 18th appearance as a coach at a world championship.

The 49-year-old Ontario native is also a five-time Olympic coach and a former national coach with Curling Canada. After all those years helping Canada at the international level, Webster calls himself a “chameleon,” referring to the fact he’ll become whatever you need him to become in order to help the cause at hand for Canada’s curlers.

“I’ve never been where these curlers are,” Webster admitted. “I’ve never thrown a rock in that type of circumstance, so I’m letting them sort of lead the direction.

“But then our job — especially mine as team coach — is just to hold them accountable to make sure we’re doing all the stuff that we know we need to do to win.”

Of the many key things he does, he works hand-and-hand on statistics in-game and off the rink with Sonnenberg to help provide Team Jacobs important analytics work.

• Jeff Stoughton is one of the best skips to ever play the sport.

The Winnipeg native boasts three Brier triumphs and two world titles — from 1996 Hamilton and 2011 Regina.

With Curling Canada, he’s the boss of the country’s men’s and mixed doubles programs and directs Team Jacobs however he can.

“It’s not a regular program where he’s with us all all year — he jumps in and out,” Webster said. “And his goal right now is to fill in some gaps and to represent Curling Canada. I don’t want to say not get in the way, but I think he’s really good about that and instead to say, ‘Just what do you need?’”

• David Murdoch also joins the national champs when it’s go-time at the major international events.

“He’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz behind the behind the curtain,” said Webster of Murdoch, who’s both an Olympic medallist and a two-time world champ — all with Scotland — and in charge of lifting Canada as high as it can go on curling’s world stage.

“I’ve got a pretty good resumé myself,” said Webster, who’s won an Ontario junior title and a few provincial university banners. “But you’ve got Jeff Stoughton — who has won world championships and a couple of Briers — Dave Murdoch — who has won an Olympic silver medal and world championships — and (alternate) Tyler Tardi — who has won a few Canadian and world junior championships. So you know what? I’m going to defer to them a couple times when there’s things about strategy.”

WHAT ELSE DO THE COACHES DO FOR CANADA?

“You’re there to help them win the gold medal,” Webster matter-of-factly said. “I would love to believe my role in this is 20%. But you get pretty realistic in this job and realize it may not even be 1%.

“But if what I can do behind the scenes is to allow them to perform and improve by 1%”

Then it’s mission accomplished for the Chameleon & Co.

Indeed, Webster and Stoughton are doing their best to help coach on the ice and whatever they can off the ice.

“A lot of it is making sure that the team stays on track and doesn’t get too distracted with all the the goings on around them,” Stoughton said. “Because you are at home, there’s a lot of demand on your time.

“But there’s also this long grind. I mean, you’re playing 12 games in less than a week and then the playoffs start. So there’s a lot of time where your time is being requested. So we just want to make sure that they stay on track and do Team Jacobs.

“It’s get out of their way and let them do what they do, and they’ll do it the best. And you’re just trying to keep them on on the straight and narrow of we’ve got as a goal, which is to win a gold medal.”

But Stoughton and the others also help with the stuff that even world-class athletes overlook in their bid to be a team by all accounts.

Webster, for instance, is a wizard with the mental aspect of the game.

“You know, you’re pulling the strings behind the scenes on those individual relationships — between myself and the guys and also between the guys themselves,” Webster said. “A lot of times in those conversations, it finishes with me asking, ‘Have you told him that?’ I would say with adult males, communication is definitely not something we’re born with.

“So I find that’s a big part of what I do is just getting them to ensure communication is on-point — good and bad. So the ability to express our experiences and what we liked and dislike about a performance on the ice to ensure that the next performance is better is super important.”

Then there is the taking care of details to allow these guys to perform during the week.

You know, the mundane tasks, such as making sure the hotel rooms are booked and ready for arrival and setting up their home at the rink — at the worlds, Canada is HQ’d out of the Western Hockey League’s Moose Jaw Warriors dressing room — to make it their own sanctuary.

“You’re ensuring that the little things are done,” Webster said. “So if these guys need coffee one morning at 6 a.m., it’s not beneath me to say, ‘Listen, I’ll go get the coffee.’ I think that’s really important.

“And Jeff, Tyler and myself will be out rock-matching most nights before games to see if we can find anything with the set of rocks they are going to be using the next day or the two sets of rocks they’re going to be using the next day.

“We’ll be knee-deep in matching rocks and analytics and scouting and stuff. And the guys won’t see a lot of that stuff, because it’ll be happening when we’re not together. But those little nuggets of information are super important.

“And the guys are really open to that,” added Webster. “They know that just showing up and being really talented at curling doesn’t win games anymore.”

HOW DID CANADA BEAT ITALY?

Canada’s 4-2 win over struggling Italy’s Joël Retornaz (2-5) early Tuesday improved Team Jacobs to 5-1.

Brad Jacobs was near-perfect, curling 99% in the contest that ended when the Canada skip delivered a double-takeout to run the enemy out of rocks in the 10th end.

“Feels great,” Jacobs told TSN. “I’ve been saying all season that a lot of my confidence comes from my teammates. And they’ve been throwing the rock awesome and super supportive and … yeah … making my job easy.”

Jacobs was also key in the seventh to help get Canada out of trouble, facing four in the house at one point during the frame. The Canadians turned it around to score one for the 4-2 lead they would never relinquish.

The only deuce of the evening affair came in the second for Team Jacobs. That was after swaps of singles in the first two ends and before Italy crawled back to within on in the fifth.

“We knew that was going to be a tough game right until the end,” added Jacobs. “That’s exactly what we expected, and that’s how it worked out.”

HOW DID CANADA BEAT SWEDEN?

Canada’s 8-6 win over defending champ Sweden (4-2) early Tuesday improved Team Jacobs to 4-1.

A last-shot take-out by skip Jacobs ensured the victory for the Calgary crew over Niklas Edin’s decorated side.

“You knew Nik’s team was going to come out tough,” Canada lead Ben Hebert told TSN. “We needed a good game, and our guys brought it.”

After allowing Sweden a steal in the opening end, Marc Kennedy’s hit-and-roll helped set up a deuce in the second.

That was followed by the critical fourth, which saw Canada force Edin to try and make a runback with a heavy-weight shot. He couldn’t and Jacobs executed for three.

“We drove Nik to Lloyd this year, because he needed a ride from the Edmonton airport to Lloydminster, and he told us his back is so mangled from all the surgeries that he can’t throw bombs in the morning,” Hebert said. “So it was, ‘Boys, he told us — now we got to make him throw bombs in the morning. He missed that runback early, that’s his fault for giving away his tips.”

From there, it was a swap of singles until the ninth, when Edin did make a tough double-takeout to score two. But the blast-out by Jacobs in the 10th ran with the hammer and iced the decision.

“That was big,” added Hebert. “We needed a good bounce-back after losing to Bruce (Mouat and Scotland on Monday). I thought we were pretty average for us (Monday) — I’d like to think we’re better than that.

“So good to get back in the win column.”

Canada gets Norway’s Magnus Ramsfjell (4-2) early Wednesday (11 a.m. ET, TSN) and Czechia’s Lukas Klima (4-3) later in the day (9 p.m. ET, TSN).

EXTRA ENDS

Also Tuesday morning; Japan (2-5) earned its second win of the week with a 6-4 decision over Czechia; and USA (3-3) improved to 3-2 with a 7-1 win over Austria (0-7) … The afternoon session saw: China (6-1) win 8-6 over Norway; Germany (3-4) win 11-2 over South Korea (0-6); Sweden 6-4 over Switzerland (4-2); and Scotland (5-1) win 9-7 over Italy … Other night games were: China 8-2 over Austria; Germany 11-3 over Japan; and Czechia 7-6 over USA … Draws 12, 13 and 14 are slated for Wednesday respectively at 11 a.m., 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. — all times ET and on TSN.

tsaelhof@postmedia.com

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