Manitoba teams’ hopes hanging by thread at Scotties
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/02/2019 (1863 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
SYDNEY, N.S. — The competition is down to the wire. Two Manitoba teams’ hopes are hanging by a thread. It’s not quite the way anyone would have predicted this Scotties field would look at this point in the week, but so much about this tournament has defied expectations.
Seventeen teams started the 2019 Scotties Tournament of Hearts Canadian women’s curling championship in Sydney. Only nine teams remain standing, and two of those will have to duke it out in a Thursday tiebreaker to finish fourth in their pool, and get the last pass into the championship round. Manitoba’s Tracy Fleury is one; British Columbia rookie Sarah Wark is the other.
Fleury, who’d mostly recovered from a 0-2 start, had a chance to push directly into the next round. But in the final game of her round robin Wednesday, she was edged out by former Northern Ontario rival Krista McCarville (5-2), which dropped Manitoba down to 4-3 on the week and in that tiebreaker position.
“We’re happy to still be alive with three losses, so that’s the positive takeaway,” Fleury said. “We’re playing good, so feeling OK about tomorrow… there’s always room for improvement, so we’ll have a good chat after this one, and learn from it, and bounce back tomorrow.”
In the other round-robin pool, Jennifer Jones is through to the top eight, but at 4-3 she has no room to spare as her Manitoba-based team prepares to face the other pool’s best. And she hasn’t been great: in fact, the defending Canadian champion lost her last round-robin game on Wednesday night, falling 7-4 to Wild Card skip Casey Scheidegger’s team.
Even before Jones shook on that loss, she knew she was advancing. On the sheet next door, Northwest Territories veteran Kerry Galusha had just been routed 13-6 by previously winless Yukon; with NWT down to 3-4 on the week, it meant there would be no tiebreakers in their pool. That didn’t ease Jones’ mind, though.
“We kind of knew what was going on, but you still carry your record forward,” the skip said after the loss. “Our backs are really against the wall now, but we have been in that position before. They still say we can curl tomorrow, so we’ll come out and do our best.”
The championship round will be led by some familiar faces. Leading the way is Alberta’s Chelsea Carey, who is perfectly poised to reach for the 1-vs.-2 game with an untarnished 7-0 record. Also advancing from that pool are Ontario’s Rachel Homan (5-2), who has been dangerous all week, and sharpshooter McCarville.
Those three — plus either Fleury or Wark, after Thursday’s 7:30 a.m. CST tiebreaker — will take on the other pool’s best.
That includes Jones and Scheidegger, who enter the next round riding high on just one loss and a fresh dose of momentum. Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle is in the mix, as is Prince Edward Island’s Suzanne Birt, a 10-time provincial champion, who earned bronze in her 2003 Scotties debut and hasn’t made the playoffs since.
Meanwhile, both Manitoba teams had dreams of being there at the end of the week. Instead, they’ll have to stay focused on surviving each of the championship round’s four games. In this field, four losses might still lead to a tiebreaker, or something; it just as likely means you’ll be left outside the playoffs, looking in.
“I’d say it’s safest to run the table,” Jones said with a bit of dry humour. “I think that would be our best bet, so we’ll have to come out to be as good as we can.”
Don’t count them out. Jones hasn’t played well all week, even against the lower-ranked teams. But in the night loss to Scheidegger, there were flashes of the familiar Jones pressure. The skip thinks her team is close to getting back to their stride. Only question is, can they get there in time?
“To be honest, I feel really good,” Jones said. “I feel like we’re throwing it good. We’re getting caught on the ice a little bit. Draw weight was a little tricky tonight… you know, we’re feather-ticking. I just missed a runback by probably a centimetre for three. So we’re close, and if we can turn it around, I like where we’re at.”
melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large (currently on leave)
Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.