Manitoba rocks Ontario
ST. CATHARINES – Rachel Homan going undefeated again at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts was beginning to feel like a foregone conclusion.
That’s gone, however, after she and her Ontario foursome gave up a four-spot in the first end Thursday night and lost decisively, 10-4, to Michelle Englot and her increasingly confident Manitoba rink.
Both Manitoba and Ontario concluded their round-robin schedules with 10-1 records, tops in the 12-team field at these women’s curling nationals.
Thus, they’ll play again Friday night in the 1-2 Page playoff (7:30 p.m. EST). Englot is firstplace finisher thanks to Thursday’s head-to-head victory, and thereby gets first-end hammer and choice of rocks.
The winner advances directly to Sunday night’s gold-medal final at 7:30 p.m. EST. The loser is relegated to Saturday night’s semi-final (7:30 p.m. EST) against the winner of Saturday afternoon’s 3-4 Page playoff game.
Chelsea Carey’s defendingchampion Team Canada foursome secured a spot in the latter on Thursday night, after improving to 8-2 with an 11-5 pounding of Saskatchewan.
Canada will face either Krista McCarville’s Northern Ontario team (which improved to 7-3 Thursday night with a tough 6-4 win against Nova Scotia) or Quebec’s Eve Belisle, w hose rink finished 7-4 Thursday night with a 8-5 defeat of British Columbia.
If McCarville loses Friday morning to Northwest Territories in the final round-robin draw, she’d finish 7-4 and play Quebec’s Belisle in a Friday 2:30 p.m. EST tiebreaker. Otherwise McCarville will finish 8-3 and play off against Carey on Saturday at 2:30 p.m. EST for a berth in the semis five hours later.
Manitoba and Ontario so far have been the class of the tournament.
Homan had been on track for her second perfect Scotties round-robin in four years. Last time, in 2014, she won the 1-2 Page playoff game (against Carey, then Saskatchewan’s skip) to earn a direct berth into the championship final. There, Homan defeated Alberta’s Valerie Sweeting 8-6 for her second Scotties title.
That Homan sported a perfect record Thursday afternoon with one round-robin game to go, yet still wasn’t assured of finishing first, speaks to how strong a week Englot and her Manitoba foursome have had.
Englot, a 53-year-old Regina resident who’d competed for decades in Saskatchewan’s green-and-white, crossed the provincial line only 12 months ago to pair up with third Kate Cameron, second Leslie Wilson and lead Raunora Westcott.
All four have been reliably effective, but Englot in particular has been upbeat, confident and making killer shots all week.
Englot may have been intending to send a bold message to Homan in the eighth end Thursday night. Up 7-4 and throwing last rock, a Manitoba stone was frozen against a mostly shielded Ontario shot rock. Many skips would have just thrown last rock through the house, content to let Homan score one and get the hammer back.
Not Englot. After calling timeout, she jumped into the hack and unleashed a great shot that picked out the Ontario stone, to score two all but end the game, up 9-4.
In the ninth, Englot spilled two Ontario stones with her last shot, to sit two and force Homan to draw for one, whereupon teams shook hands.
“We have been playing fairly solid all year,” she said. “And so we just needed to concentrate on bringing our A game to this event, and that’s what so far we’ve managed to do, for the most part. We’ve had a couple of bad ends here and there. But hopefully we keep building some momentum heading into the final few days.”
Manitoba dumped British Columbia 7-2 Thursday morning.
As for Carey, through Wednesday she had won seven straight games after dropping her opener to Homan, 7-5, in an extra end Saturday night. But Thursday afternoon -- with frosty ice conditions again plaguing curlers’ shot judgment, as had happened Saturday, mainly because of the return of record-high temperatures outdoors -- Carey gave up three in the opening end to Northern Ontario’s McCarville and never recovered, losing 8-4.
“It’s the exact same ice conditions as last night,” Carey said. “It’s tough, but it was just as bad last night. It’s super frosty. You’re guessing at draw weight. It’s tricky.”
A broken dehumidifier in the Meridian Centre contributed to ice unreliability, to the extent ice-makers scraped the four sheets at the fifth-end break in Thursday draws.