TRURO - They were so close to the men's curling provincial semifinal they could almost taste it.
But that 6-5 setback to Mayflower's Shawn Adams last year has served as motivation for Truro's Peter Burgess and his brothers Craig and Todd and teammate Jared Bent this season.
"At the end of that we just kind of said 'You know, we're not that far off,'" 39-year-old Peter, the youngest of the squad's three brothers, said.
So the foursome stepped it up a notch this season, practicing and playing more often in order to be ready for this week's Nova Scotia Men's Molson Curling Championship, which kicks off Wednesday at CFB Halifax.
Burgess opens at 9 a.m. with a tilt against Mayflower's Brent MacDougall before facing Mayflower's Ian Fitzner-LeBlanc at 2 p.m.
"We want to win it," Peter said. "Obviously there are other teams that'll have something to say about that but that's our goal. We want to win the thing."
And he feels his squad has a good chance to do so. Thanks to extra commitment, the team has been playing what Peter says is its best ever and, therefore, confidence is at an all-time high.
"Now we just have to line those things up this week," Peter said.
The team has been building up to this year, seeing steady improvements in performance since forming a team three years ago. In their first go-around, they relied solely on experience and got inconsistent results. Last year the team changed its approach and this year it's been paying off.
The team wasted no time qualifying for this week's event, nabbing one of five berths in the first of two qualifiers in mid-January in Yarmouth. The foursome went 4-1 at the event.
"We've been going into each event with a specific goal," Peter said. "We've been playing within ourselves."
Doing that and staying consistent will be key if the squad hopes to achieve its goal of earning a berth at the Tim Horton's Brier national championship in Saskatoon March 3 to 11.
"Getting to the Brier is why we're doing this," he said. "We're going to need to play as well as we have all year because the other teams are no slouches. Mark Dacey has proven himself over and over again. But we just need to take it one shot at a time and stay in the moment."
The event features a new format, moving from a 16-team triple knockout last year to an eight team round robin with four teams advancing to the playoffs. Playoff winners then move on to Sunday's final.
"It's going to be a strong field and the new format has made it that way," Peter said. "But we're going to enjoy it. Every game is going to be competitive."
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