Nova Scotia advances to semifinal at Scotties
Mary-Anne Arsenault is two wins away from her sixth Scotties Tournament of Hearts title.
The Nova Scotia skip led her team into the semifinal at the Canadian women’s curling championship by defeating Northern Ontario’s Tracy Fleury 6-2 on Saturday.
Arsenault will play the loser of Saturday night’s Page 1-2 playoff between Kerri Einarson’s wild-card team and Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones. The semifinal is set for this afternoon.
The winner of the Page 1-2 playoff goes directly into tonight’s final.
“It was so nice to put a really good game together. I’m so proud of my girls,” Arsenault said. “Any time we got into a bit of trouble then Jen and Christina (second Jennifer Baxter and third Christina Black) would get us back out of trouble so it was awesome.”
Nova Scotia broke the game open against Northern Ontario by scoring three in the sixth end to go up 5-1.
Nova Scotia, which hasn’t won a Scotties title since 2004, won its ninth straight game and improved to 10-2 at the tournament.
Arsenault’s only two losses at this year’s event have come against Einarson and Jones.
“We have a bit of time between now and next game and be proud of ourselves, but then it’s back to business,” said Arsenault.
“Those two games, particularly the game against Jennifer (Jones) we didn’t play well, and the game against the wild-card, my team didn’t play well.
“We just play like we did (Saturday) and we’ll be right in it.”
Nova Scotia opened the scoring against Northern Ontario with a deuce in the fourth.
Fleury answered with one in the fifth before Arsenault’s big sixth. Northern Ontario added a single in the eighth, but couldn’t mount a comeback.
Arsenault shot 97 per cent compared to 72 per cent overall by Fleury.
The one-versus-two game between Jones and Einarson was in progress at press time.