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John Shuster was watching curling practice at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center on Monday when he looked into the stands and remembered where it all began.
“The stage was set where the home end is set up here,” said Shuster, from neighboring Superior, Wis. “My seats were about where the top of the house is on Sheet C.”
Shuster was in the audience in January 2006 to watch Brad Paisley, Sara Evans and Billy Currington in concert. It was his first date with the woman who would eventually become Sara Shuster.
Chris Plys, who is from Duluth, spent plenty of time in the DECC (pronounced “the deck”).
“The Shrine Circus and Monster Jam and back when we had the Duluth Lumberjacks indoor football team there for a couple years,” he said. “Just growing up, going to a million things there.
“It’s gonna be really special to have a curling event in a building where I spent so much of my childhood.”
Shuster and Plys also attended Minnesota Duluth hockey games there. Gophers fans know the DECC is where their team often was on the wrong end of questionable refereeing decisions when the Gophers played the Bulldogs.
Shuster and Plys, along with teammates John Landsteiner, Matt Hamilton and Colin Hufman, are in Duluth this week for the USA Curling national championships, a checkpoint toward the 2026 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Landsteiner also is from Duluth. Hamilton is from McFarland, Wis. Hufman was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, but considers St. Paul his home.
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