Combining sport and pleasure is a wonderful thing – and few do it better than Team Bonot.

The Northern Ontario rink that merges together Sudbury’s own Amanda Gates (lead) with the northwestern Ontario trio of Trevor Bonot (skip), Jackie McCormick (vice) and Mike McCarville (second) leaves for Prince Albert (SK) just over a week from now, participating in the Canadian Mixed Curling Championship for the second time in a year or so.

And while these are clearly four very talented and focused no longer junior aged athletes, it’s a very safe bet that good curling and laughs both will find their way to the forefront as the quartet represents the NOCA from November 6th to the 12th.

Keep in mind that Bonot and McCormick (who are siblings) represented Canada at the World Mixed playdowns in Switzerland in 2017 while McCarville and Gates have Brier and Scotties experience on their resume respectively.

We are talking about curlers who have found both enjoyment and success in a singular setting.

“For me, it’s because I get to play with people that I am really close with,” said Bonot, a 37 year old who originally hails from Stratton (west of Fort Frances) but now calls Thunder Bay home.

“My sister is my third and Amanda is my best friend. It fits well with me.”

Bonot and McCarville, meanwhile, have formed the back-end of a men’s rink in these parts for more than a few years now. The truth is that the comfort level that the skip enjoys with his teammates extends well beyond the time they enjoy together once they step off the ice.

“The girls on our team have tremendous ability and can throw pretty much any shot,” said Bonot. “I might call the game just a little more cautiously because we don’t play together all the time.”

Ah yes – the joy of mixed curling in pretty much all of Canada. Not only are there very few teams who compete together on a regular basis, but even the ones who garner provincial banners (as Team Bonot did back in April) have to wait more than six months to reconvene for the next step towards Worlds.

In fact, their game a week from Sunday against the Northwest Territories will mark the first contest that Team Bonot have enjoyed as a unit since their NOCA triumph in North Bay last spring.

“Honestly, it’s not too bad because Trevor and Mike do play together regularly, they are always on the ice together, and Jackie and I just kind of follow their lead,” said Gates, who is making her fourth appearance at Mixed Nationals, the same total as both Bonot and McCormick and one less than McCarville.

“Trevor and Jackie are siblings and obviously very comfortable on the ice. And we just kind of let it roll off our past experience.”

“When we get together, it’s not like we have to learn each other,” added Bonot. “We just know who each other are and how we throw. It doesn’t hinder us not to play together regularly.”

Still, they have decided to mix things up just a tad, arriving one day early this time around.

“We’re giving ourselves some time to get into the city, maybe do something off-ice as a team on the Saturday, just to get back into the groove of being together again,” said Gates.

At the end of the day, this is hardly their first BBQ.

“Experience does help a lot because you know what it takes to come out sharp, you know what sharp feels like,” said Gates. “You can get into game mode a lot sooner just because you’ve been to so many nationals before.”

Now benefitting from a couple of weeks of play at the Idylwylde this month and also having made the trek to Thunder Bay earlier in October, just to throw some rocks with Bonot and McCarville, Gates is not all that concerned about any rustiness in her game.

“With thirty years of curling, I still need to practice, but if I can just get out and throw and slide, that gets me back to where I need to be for a national championship,” she said.

It’s a national championship wherein Team Bonot should be considered a legitimate contender – though the skip noted that he’s not quite wearing that same target on his back that he might have back in 2018.

“The first year when we went back after winning, I felt a lot of pressure to perform again,” said Bonot. “I don’t feel that pressure any more. I have nerves, the good nerves that I always get when I play a top end competition.”

“I think it’s more confidence than it is pressure,” Gates chimed in. “We’re coming in excited. We know that we can do well if we all perform to our ability.”

And if they curl well and have fun in the process, Team Bonot could not truthfully ask for a whole lot more.