Koe Team Splits, Thiessen Sticks with Team Canada

  Days after representing Canada at the World Men’s Curling Championships, Kevin Koe is leaving his rink to form a new team.
 
  Next season, Koe will have Marc Kennedy at third, Brent Laing at second and Ben Hebert at lead. Kennedy and Hebert formed the front end of Kevin Martin’s Olympic champion rink at Vancouver 2010 while Laing won two world championships with Glenn Howard.
 
  Koe’s current rink of third Pat Simmons, second Carter Rycroft and Brandon product Nolan Thiessen are expected to announce a new skip soon that will lead the team into next year’s Canada Cup of Curling, World Financial Group Continental Cup and Tim Hortons Brier.
 
  "There’s all those names out there, and we know all those guys, but we want to find a guy that fits in with us," Thiessen told CKLQ’s Bruce Luebke on Tuesday afternoon, "We want to find a guy that we all like and meshes well with our personalities and also meshes well with us on the ice."
 
  Martin and Howard would be two of the bigger name skips looking for new teams, but Martin isn’t 100 per cent sure himself that he’ll be curling competitively next season.
 
  This is the time period where curling teams begin the four-year cycle to the next Canadian Curling Trials but Thiessen says, for right now, they’re just looking for someone for next season.
 
  "I think we’re not going overly be concerned right now with it being a four-year commitment," said Thiessen, "It’ll be more of a one-year commitment and then see what happens and where everybody shakes out after that."
 
  The last event for Team Koe will be the April 15-20 Grand Slam Players’ Championship in Summerside, P.E.I.
 
  That event will also be the swan song for Kevin Martin, Glenn Howard and Jeff Stoughton’s current teams.
 
  Olympic gold medalist Brad Jacobs and Brandon product Mike McEwen and his Winnipeg team are also in the 12-team field.