Kaitlyn Lawes hopes tide is turning for her Manitoba team at Scotties
Kaitlyn Lawes has asked for her teammates’ patience as she irons out her game at the Canadian women’s curling championship.
A woman with a lot of biggame experience on the national and international stage in over a decade as Jennifer Jones’ third is skipping a team at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts for the second time in her career.
The Manitoba women’s champions were under must-win pressure early in Calgary after losing three of their first four games.
Tuesday’s 8-4 doubling of B.C.’s Corryn Brown kept Lawes’ playoff hopes alive. The skip averaged 74 per cent in her shotmaking in Manitoba’s first four games until a 94 per cent outing Tuesday.
“I just kept saying to the girls ‘hang in there with me’ and I felt like I had a great game today,” Lawes said.
“I feel like every game out here is must win. Losing a few early was disappointing, but we’ve been close in every game and for me, it was just I missed a few too many.”
The 35-year-old is the only curler in the world to own Olympic gold medals in both team curling with Jones (2014) and mixed doubles with John Morris (2018).
Lawes, Selena Njegovan, Jocelyn Peterman and Kristin MacCuish rank fourth among Canadian women’s teams behind Rachel Homan, Jennifer Jones and Kerri Einarson.
Lawes posted a 5-3 record in her Hearts debut as a skip last year in Kamloops, B.C., where her team was ousted in a tiebreaker.
Tiebreaker games have been eliminated from the format, so Lawes can’t afford another loss at Win Sport’s Event Centre.
Head-to-head results followed by cumulative draw the-button scores that precede each game solve ties.
“I personally take a lot of pride in shotmaking and how great this team performs,” Lawes said. “We’re all really strong competitors, and we want to win. The great thing about this team is we are a new team. We are learning.”
Alberta’s Selena Sturmay stayed unbeaten atop Pool A at 5-0 after dumping Laurie St-Georges 8-3. Quebec dropped to 3-2 alongside Krista McCarville of Northern Ontario.
“The further we get into this event, definitely there’s more and more pressure, but at the end of the day, we’re just looking to improve with every game and that’s what I think we’ve done,” Sturmay said.
Defending champion Einarson (5-1) chased the host province with an 11-6 win over Saskatchewan’s Skylar Ackerman (3-3).
Einarson continued to curl without regular lead Briane Harris, who was declared ineligible to compete on opening day for reasons still unexplained by Curling Canada or the skip. Alternate Krysten Karwacki has played in Harris’s absence.
Lawes and Brown were 2-3 in Pool B ahead of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Stacie Curtis (1-4), who beat winless Jane DiCarlo of Prince Edward Island 11-6.
The top three teams in each pool Thursday advance to Friday’s six-team playoff round, from which Saturday’s four Page playoff teams will be determined.