Einarson’s golden start to season continues
The reality of Olympic curling gold is a long ways in the offing. Four years, in fact.
But if Team Einarson dares to dream of such glory in 2022, nobody could blame them.
Not with the Winnipeg rink finding immense success so early in the Winter Olympics quadrennial — the latest bit of prosperity coming in the 41st edition of the Autumn Gold Curling Classic at the Calgary Curling Club.
“One thing at a time,” said skip Kerri Einarson, chuckling at the thought of an Olympic-sized task just weeks after icing the team for the first time. “Something like that is still quite a ways away, so we’re just taking it one spiel at a time, one game at time.”
Over the weekend, Einarson and her team of third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard and lead Briane Meilleur took it one game at a time right though to win the Autumn Gold spiel.
That meant 10 games over four days with the final draw a 7-5 win over a fellow Winnipeg rink skipped by Jennifer Jones.
It also meant a fourth event victory for Einarson just eight weeks into the 2018-19 World Curling Tour season.
“We didn’t expect this kind of early success,” said 31-year-old Einarson, the 2016 Manitoba Scotties champion. "We’re just really happy to be in this position.
“We didn’t expect to have four wins under our belt. But it’s really amazing to get off to a great start with a new squad.”
Those event wins have come in the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard in Ontario, the Morris SunSpiel in Manitoba, the Mother Club Fall Curling Classic in Winnipeg and here at the Autumn Gold with Monday’s success prompting fans post-game at the local curling club to proclaim it the most important of the triumphs so far for the Einarson foursome.
“Jen and her team are a great team,” said Einarson of her final foes. "We have a lot of respect for all these big teams we saw here this weekend and we’re going to see much more of them throughout the season.
“We had some adversity this weekend. We had some tough games where shots didn’t go our way. But we just stuck with the process and it just all came together.”
After three A-event wins, Einarson and Co. lost two straight games to drop quickly into the last-chance C event. But they rebounded by winning five straight draws, including Monday’s quarterfinal and semifinal contests by respective 5-4 and 7-4 scores over Alberta-champion Casey Scheidegger and three-time Canadian queen Rachel Homan of Ottawa.
Then in the final, Einarson stole two in the first end and counted two with the hammer in each of the fourth and sixth ends and one more with last rock in the eighth and final end to edge the reigning Canadian and world champ Jones.
“The ice was quite tricky (Sunday),” Einarson said. "It was just curling a little bit more than it was previous."
Added her third Sweeting: "The ice was a little bit different — could be because there was just one game going on. It was just a matter of who figured it out first and I thought Kerri did a great job of that. We just let her take control and it was tricky, but she did a great job of figuring it out and making the big shot when we needed it.”
Maybe four years from now — if you’ll excuse the too-early-to-think-about proposition — they’ll make an impression on the Olympic stage.