Sheldon Wettig was born in Iqaluit, which was known at the time as Frobisher Bay, N.W.T., but moved to Yellowknife when he was 11 months old.
He now lives in Brandon and he curls competitively at the Brandon Curling Club. While Sheldon is used to curling in front of a few fans at his home club in the Wheat City, he is playing in front of thousands of fans this week as he curls with Team Nunavut at the Canadian Men's Curling Championship, which is famously known as the Brier.
How does Sheldon get the chance to compete at the Brier with Nunavut you ask? It all started because of a conversation with Mike McEwen -- skip of Team Ontario at the event -- and he's also a good friend of Sheldon. Mike asked Wettig why he never took advantage of his birthright status.
Meaning he would be eligible to play for Nunavut because that's where he was born. After a few more steps along the way, Sheldon was contacted by the Nunavut players and he was asked if he wanted to give it a go. Months later, Wettig is living out his dream of playing in the Brier and he's enjoying every second of it.
"It's been absolutely amazing, the entire experience," said Wettig. "We always seem to have pretty good crowd support when we step on the ice, so that's really exciting for all of us."
As of publishing, Team Nunavut is 1-5 at the event after losses against Manitoba (Dunstone), Northern Ontario (Horgan), Nova Scotia (Manuel), Saskatchewan (Knapp), and Alberta (Koe). In the end, their losses aren't significant at all, it's the one win that they have. In their first game of the event, they stole a single point in the ninth and 10th end as they downed Newfoundland and Labrador, 7-4.
The win made history as it was Nunavut's first-ever win at the Brier after losing their first 38 games of the competition. Following the win, Sheldon said he received 135 text messages and dozens of phone calls.
"It's indescribable, the feeling of winning that first-ever game with Nunavut," offered Wettig. "I was lucky enough to have family in attendance and I also had five really good buddies from Brandon that showed up and surprised me. As we were getting closer to winning the game, the noise in the crowd just got louder and louder. When they were all on their feet and cheering for us after we shook hands and won, we really realized what we had just achieved, it was amazing."
While he is a competitive curler in Brandon, Sheldon doesn't play as often as some of the top teams do and he is amazed at how much skill they have.
"It's insane how good these guys are, it's crazy," offered Wettig. "You can play a rec league curling game, miss a shot and you can still score. If you miss here, you can't score and you could give up a big end. These guys make you pay for any mistake you make, they are so good."
With their five losses, Nunavut has been eliminated from the playoff round; however, Wettig will forever be in the history books as he helped the province win their first-ever game at the Brier. This was Sheldon's second appearance at the Brier after he served as Nunavut's fifth in 2020, but he is playing third this year.
