His team’s winning run at the Scottish Junior Curling Championship caused travel chaos for Bruce Mouat’s family at the weekend but the Napier University student now faces tricky logistical planning of his own as a result of his success.
Team Mouat’s successful defence of their title means they will once again represent Scotland at the World Juniors later this season and their skip has already qualified for another World Championship after winning the Scottish Mixed Doubles Championships with Gina Aitken in December.
Having also led his team to victory at the Dumfries International Challenger Series event against a strong field in December the 21-year-old has every reason to be oozing confidence.
“It was a great boost not losing a single match throughout the (Scottish Junior) event and in the final we piled the pressure on in the first few ends as we like to get points on the scoreboard first,” he said after their 8-3 defeat of Team McNay in the final.
“So we felt good and strong throughout and we are really chuffed about heading to the Worlds, but it is also a challenging position to be in as it is going to be a really, really busy few months ahead.”
In making his travel plans he can perhaps take some tips from his mother Marie given the way she juggled her priorities on Sunday.
“It was nice to have my parents there,” said Mouat.
“My mum had to drop my brother Colin off at Edinburgh airport yesterday morning as he will spend a year in Australia on a work visa and then she had to dash up to Aberdeen to join my dad Bob to watch my final.
“I said my goodbyes to my brother on Friday night during the tournament so it was good he saw our winning streak before he set off. I think to do achieve at this you have to be prepared to dedicate lots of hard work as well as be prepared to make lots of sacrifices, socially as well.
“As a result I am really looking forward to what the next few months can offer and medalling at two world champs would be really amazing and a dream situation to be in.”
Currently in the third year of a Festival and Events with Entrepreneurship degree, he knows that meticulous planning is going to have to go into his arrangements over the weeks and months ahead.
“I will be away for six to eight weeks over the next three months and after the World Juniors will then have to dive head first into the Mixed Doubles and I also have to plan my six month work placement as part of my degree. I will have to give a lot of consideration to planning as I want to do as much training as I can for both Worlds’ but at the moment there are a lot of clashing dates.
“We won bronze at the World Juniors last year and we really want to do better than that this year. At the same time, the Mixed Doubles with Gina is also very important to me and as it is now an Olympic discipline as of 2018, this could also be very serious going forward.”
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