29-04-2025
Samagalski adds new page to storied career
The rocks had to align for Derek Samagalski to remain in competitive curling next season.
The 40-year-old has a lot on his plate these days, raising a young family with his wife Selena in Carberry. His two daughters, six-year-old Dekkar and one-year-old Navy, take up most of his attention, leaving him with few hours in a week to give to a full-time, travelling team.
He presumed it was unlikely to find a new squad that met all his needs this late in the quadrennial.
Nicole Osborne / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES
Derek Samagalski says he couldn't pass up the possibility of playing in another Brier.
So it almost seemed too good to be true when Samagalski's phone rang shortly after last month's Brier, with fellow Manitoban Sheldon Wettig on the other end to present the free agent with the perfect opportunity to join him, second Brady St. Louis and lead Christian Smitheram.
It didn't take long for Samagalski to agree to become the next skip of the Nunavut-based team.
'We've known each other for years,' Samagalski said of he and Wettig, who lives in Brandon. 'We never really curled with each other, never really curled against each other very much, but we've always chatted here and there. He reached out to me early in the year, and I was helping him a little bit with some of his practice and stuff like that, and we kind of joked about it, 'Hey, maybe one year we can play in the Brier or try to put a team together for the Brier,' and I kind of didn't really think much of it.
'Here we are months later, and we're forming a team where that's our main goal is trying to represent Nunavut at the Brier.'
Wettig has helped represent Nunavut at the last three national men's championships, once with Jake Higgs as his skip and the last two with Shane Latimer. St. Louis and Smitheram were on the 2023 and 2024 squads.
Nunavut has gone a combined 2-22 in the last three Briers, leading Wettig to look for another change.
'I'm excited. I've never done it before. I'm looking forward to the challenge, and it's something that I've always wanted to do, but I've never done it at a high level yet.'– Derek Samagalski
'I didn't really want to play a whole lot, and that's why when I got this offer from Nunavut… it was with a very limited schedule,' Samagalski said. 'It was like, 'Oh man, this sounds awesome,' and like I said, there is a chance for us to go to the Brier, which obviously makes it sweet being a Newfoundland Brier, as well.'
Indeed, Samagalski has escaped the rugged path that is the Manitoba playdowns, and his team is already the overwhelming favourite to represent Nunavut at the 2026 Brier in St. John's.
That's the case despite Samagalski, a six-time provincial champion as a lead and second, being a skip for the first time in his career.
'I'm excited. I've never done it before,' said Samagalski. 'I'm looking forward to the challenge, and it's something that I've always wanted to do, but I've never done it at a high level yet.'
The move to skip was also the right move physically. Years of heavy sweeping have taken their toll on him.
'I've been playing on the competitive tour now for close to 20 years, and I don't know how many more years I have left,' he said. 'Playing front-end every year I get older, obviously your body takes more of a pounding.'
'I've been playing on the competitive tour now for close to 20 years, and I don't know how many more years I have left.'– Derek Samagalski
Samagalski played with Reid Carruthers for more than 13 years before stepping away from the team halfway through last season. After a few months away from the game, he linked up with Jacques Gauthier and Tanner Lott to form a three-man team in the lead-up to the last provincial championship qualifier, which they won.
After coming up short at provincials, Samagalski, Gauthier and Lott agreed to explore their own opportunities, while keeping in touch in case nothing materialized. Odds were, their time together had run its course.
'I think we were just on a little bit of different levels, where even the reason why I had to step back from the Carruthers team was just — everyone thought that I retired, which I never, ever said that I was retiring. I just said I was taking a step back. When I did have to leave Reid's team there in November, curling was just getting too much, where I couldn't commit to every day, five days a week, spieling, practising, gym, with a young family,' said Samagalski, adding Gauthier and Lott were both in the market for travelling teams.
'It was getting to me. And I just couldn't do that anymore.'
The competitive fire still burned in Samagalski's belly, though, and his new squad offers up a chance to play championship curling next season.
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'I get to skip, which I've never done before, and get to learn a little bit of things, and the chance of the possibility of going to the Brier, I just couldn't pass that up.'– Derek Samagalski
Samagalski and Wettig plan to play in the Westman Superleague together with a different front-end next season. They hope the experience together will bode well for them during the most important stretch of the competitive calendar, when they are with St. Louis and Smitheram.
Samagalski expects there to be some rust on his part, and he anticipates a learning curve with his new teammates as they get a feel for one another, but he believes it's something worth experiencing.
'I figured to myself, well, if I have a chance to play on a team that's going to have a limited schedule, I get to skip, which I've never done before, and get to learn a little bit of things, and the chance of the possibility of going to the Brier, I just couldn't pass that up,' he said.
Joshua Frey-SamReporter
Josh Frey-Sam reports on sports and business at the Free Press. Josh got his start at the paper in 2022, just weeks after graduating from the Creative Communications program at Red River College. He reports primarily on amateur teams and athletes in sports. Read more about Josh.
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