Mighty Manitoba

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This article was published 24/02/2021 (1154 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Count them up — one, two, three and four Manitoba teams have slid into the championship round of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

In fact, half the remaining squads in the next phase of the national women’s championship hail from these parts.

To no one’s great surprise, Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson, the defending Scotties champion, and six-time winner, Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones are in, while a pair of wild-card teams, Tracy Fleury of East St. Paul (skipped by Chelsea Carey) and Beth Peterson of Winnipeg join the party.

Only the top four teams in each pool advanced to the final eight.

Einarson’s Gimli crew suffered its first loss of the championship, falling 7-4 on Thursday afternoon to Ontario’s Rachel Homan in a rematch of the 2020 final in Moose Jaw, Sask. Both teams moved on with 7-1 records in Pool A.

“We knew it was going to be a great game. We knew we’d have to battle out there and we did. We didn’t let up and we got some rocks in good spots and figured out the ice. It was just her turn,” Einarson told the Free Press. “We played really well, so we have to keep that going.

“We definitely don’t want to lose any more. We still want to keep building as a team, as a unit, and I feel like we’re doing that. We’re on a good path. One loss isn’t the end of the world.”

Indeed, not. But records from preliminary play carry over into the two-day championship round, beginning Friday. Teams cross over and play each of the squads that qualified from the other pool.

The top three teams qualify for Sunday’s playoffs. The frontrunner proceeds to the 7:30 p.m. final, and the second- and third-place teams meet in a 1:30 p.m. semifinal.

Peterson, a Scotties rookie from Assiniboine Memorial, stole her way to the championship round. Down 8-5 after eight ends, the Wild Card 3 team earned a deuce in the ninth and then swiped singles in the 10th and extra end to register a 9-8 triumph over Kerry Galusha of the Northwest Territories.

The veteran Galusha had to draw a big chunk of the button but came up light.

Both teams had entered the contest with 4-3 records in Pool A, but a fifth ‘W’ propelled Peterson to a better place.

“We’re pretty excited. This was our first goal, to make championship pool, so we’ve done that, check mark, and move onto the next goal. The girls really held me in there (Thursday). I wasn’t, unfortunately, my best but my girls were great and brought me back after a few missed shots and we were able to capitalize in the last two ends,” Peterson said, of third Jenn Loder, second Katherine Doerksen and lead Brittany Tran.

“I think that we were the best team in the 10th and 11th end that we have been this week.”

Alberta’s Laura Walker (5-3) also qualified through Pool A, punching their ticket with an easy 11-1 victory over Yukon’s Laura Eby in the afternoon.

In Pool B, Jones, Saskatchewan’s Sherry Anderson and Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges all finished with 6-2 records, while Fleury slipped in at 5-3.

So, Friday’s first draw at 1:30 p.m. feature these matchups: Walker vs. St-Georges; Anderson vs. Einarson; Homan vs. Fleury; Jones vs. Peterson.

Fleury (Wild Card 1) took care of business in the morning draw, slamming Sarah Hill of Newfoundland-Labrador 11-2, and then had to play the waiting game.

But Corryn Brown of B.C., did them a solid, administering a lethal blow to Suzanne Birt of P.E.I., who suffered a crushing 9-5 defeat to the Kamloops team in the evening to fall to 4-4 — eliminating the need for any tie-breakers.

Carey, a former two-time Scotties champion representing Alberta, left no doubt she was relieved to tie up loose ends early and get the rest of the day off.

“We were happy to have the bye last because by this point — I don’t know about these guys (glancing at Njegovan), they’re younger than me — but my body could use a little break, so we like our draw,” she said.

Carting three losses into the next stage isn’t ideal, however, Carey maintained the team can’t suddenly adopt a win-or-else mentality now.

“I don’t think thinking like that is the way to win any game ever. You just gotta go one game at a time. We knew no matter what going into the championship pool is gonna be tough. So, you can’t look forward. You can’t worry about what your record is, you just go out and try to win each game and at the end of the week you look at the standings and see if you’re in the top three,” she said.

Jones and company had pledged to conclude the Pool B round-robin in style. The six-time champion routed New Brunswick’s Melissa Adams 12-3 and the beat Lori Eddy of Nunavut 10-3 in the evening.

“Obviously, we’re pretty happy with where we’re at, given how we kind of had a bumpy start,” the former Winnipegger, now living in Horseshoe Valley, Ont., said after the morning victory. The team, representing the St. Vital Club, began the week 2-2 but rattled off four consecutive triumphs.

“It was kind of a must-win day for us, I would say, and then we’ll re-evaluate. We really didn’t want more than two losses after this first round,” added Jones.

There was certainly pressure to run through the round-robin with as clean a record as possible, knowing teams carry their records in.

Heightening the stress level to the max is the reduction of the number of playoff teams by one. Curling Canada made the decision to eliminate the four-team Page playoff system and replace it with a three-team system to save a day of Scotties competition inside the bubble.

“It’s a massive difference, actually. It makes it a lot more challenging to make it in, especially with the expanded field. It’s gonna be difficult, which makes you have to play well, and you want to be playing well heading into the playoffs, any way,” Jones said.

The fifth Manitoba team in Calgary, Altona’s Mackenzie Zacharias, finished its first-ever Scotties with a 3-5 record. But Team Wild Card 2 went out with a bang.

The 21-year-old skip, a University of Manitoba student, made a terrific double-takeout to score four and post a 9-4 win over Krysta Burns of Northern Ontario.

“Going into this game we wanted to play the best that we could and leave on a high note. Making that shot in the last one there to put the game away was really nice,” said Zacharias, the 2020 world junior women’s champion.

“We want to come back for more. We didn’t exactly do everything we wanted to accomplish here this week, so we’re going to be hungry for more next year and we’re going to give it our all to get back here.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell