'It's everything we've ever wanted in our lives'

It may seem like a long time.

It is after all, a span of 365 days.

The day was February 21, 2014 and the backdrop was the curling venue for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. It was then that three guys from Sault Ste. Marie and another from Winnipeg won a gold medal.

Representing Soo Curlers, Team Jacobs, skipped by Brad Jacobs along with third Ryan Fry, second E.J. Harnden and lead Ryan Harnden, beat Great Britain 9-3 in the final to become Olympic champions.

“We’re very blessed,” Fry told the Winnipeg Sun at the time. “We formed this team and it really proves that if you give something your everything and you don’t quit when things go bad, good things happen to you.”

“I’ll never ever, ever, ever, no matter what happens from here on out, forget the moment of standing on the podium with my brother,” E.J. Harnden told the Sun of sharing the moment with brother Ryan.

Flash forward a year.

What exactly has the last year been like for Team Jacobs?

“It’s been incredible,” Jacobs said. “It’s not something that’s easily put into words. It’s something that in order to actually explain it to somebody, you would have to have been along for the ride with us."

“It’s been amazing. It’s everything we’ve ever wanted in our lives in the sport of curling,” Jacobs added. “We’re very fortunate but there was a lot of hard work that went into accomplishing everything that we’ve accomplished in the last year and a half. It’s certainly not luck by any stretch. It was a million curling rocks thrown since even before we were teenagers.”

Ryan Harnden echoed the sentiments of the skip, calling it a special feeling.

“It’s been crazy,” Harnden said of the past 12 months. “It’s been in the back of my mind the last couple of days knowing that we won the Olympic Gold Medal a year ago. It’s been a crazy year but it’s something that we adjusted to. It was a little different at the beginning because it was something that we never went through before. It was kind of tough and stressful but it was an amazing feeling. You get to do stuff that you’ve never done before in your life. It’s a special feeling.”

Team Jacobs Coach Tom Coulterman said it’s been tough to follow the team tracks of the team in the past year.

“They’ve been all over the place,” said Coulterman. “It really has been a tremendously busy year for them. I don’t even know all of the places they’ve been. I can’t keep track of what they were doing through the spring once they got back from Sochi and through the summer because they were all over the place. They were at hockey games. They were at baseball games. They were at last years Brier as visitors. Now they’ve got to focus themselves back on trying to win a spot back at the Brier.”

Team Jacobs is currently preparing for the 2015 Tim Hortons Brier, which opens on Feb. 28 in Calgary, Alta.

(File Photo)