PERFECT CAREY ROLLS INTO WOMEN’S FINAL
Calgary-based team one win away from ticket to 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games
Chelsea Carey was not about to start patting herself on the back when there is still so much work to be done.
“I don’t think there’s any happy-to-be-there feeling amongst us,” Carey said.
The Calgary-based skip punched a ticket to Sunday’s final of the Canadian Olympic curling trials by beating Krista McCarville of Thunder Bay, Ont., 5-2 and Michelle Englot of Winnipeg 10-3 on Friday to run her record to a perfect 8-0.
Hers is the first women’s team to go undefeated in the round robin of the Olympic trials.
“None of it matters unless you go undefeated through the whole thing,” Carey said. “It’s great, but it’s meaningless if you don’t win that last game.”
The Winnipeg native and her team of Cathy Overton-Clapham, Jocelyn Peterman and Laine Peters will play either Ottawa’s Rachel Homan (7-1) or Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones (5-3) in the final Sunday.
Jones and Homan play Saturday and hometown-favourite Homan will have hammer in the first end. Stats show teams with hammer in the first end win 55 per cent of the time.
Homan beat Jones 9-4 on Friday night in the final game of the round robin, though both teams had already clinched playoff spots. The crowd chanted “Let’s go Homan” as the game went on and ramped up the atmosphere lacking all week long.
Homan responded with a precision performance and her seventh straight win. Her loss came on the opening draw, against Carey.
“It’s an experience I’ll never forget,” Homan said of playing in front of about 8,000. “Just hearing the whole roar of the building is unbelievable. The team is playing phenomenal and I’m loving where we’re at right now.”
Jones lost her third straight after winning her first five.
“It’s playoffs, it’s all a new day tomorrow, so it’s fun to come in here and play a game that really didn’t matter,” said Jones, the 2014 Olympic champion. “It was so much fun to play tonight. We had a great time, I loved the atmosphere and hopefully, it will be the same (Saturday).”
The winner of Sunday’s final will represent Canada at the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang from Feb. 9-25.
“It’s hard to wrap my head around it right now,” Carey said. “All you can ask for is to be in that game. That’s all everyone wants all week. If you’re not in the game you’re not in the Olympics, so that’s what we were looking for all week.”
Carey, the 2016 Canadian champion, has been the star of the week at the trials. Her team has won many different ways — last-rock finesse shots, precise takeouts, blowouts, steals.
All the while, the skip has been playing with a heavy heart. Carey’s grandfather, John Demkiw, died at age 93 just as the Olympic trials were beginning.
She missed his funeral and was upset about that, but it didn’t affect her on the ice — she just kept on winning. Now she just needs one more and she’ll be the envy of every curler in Canada.
“I’ve always been a big believer that there’s a lot of destiny involved in an event like this so for me, my job is to prepare as much as I can,” Carey said. “I’ve done that, we’ve all done that, leading up. Then you come out in the final and you allow your training to take over as much as you can and you just hope it’s your day.”
The team with a bye to the final has won the Olympic trials nine times out of 10 so far in the men’s and women’s divisions.
Overton-Clapham had a feeling something good was in the cards earlier this fall.
“A few months ago I did say to (Peters) that I thought we had a good chance,” Overton-Clapham said. “As we were walking off the ice (Friday) I said, ‘ Who knew?’ and she said, ‘ You knew.’”