Curtis making steady improvements at Scotties
Stacie Curtis and her team from the Re/max Centre in St. John’s hope to keep the upward trajectory going in Penticton, B.C. at the Canadian Scotties Tournament of Hearts which opens today.
Curtis is making her fifth trip to the national Scotties curling championship and since her first appearance in 2011, when she went 1-10, she’s been making steady improvement, going 2-9 in 2013, 3-8 in 2016 and 5-6 last year in St. Catharines, Ont.
Curtis, Erin Porter, Julie Devereaux, Carrie Vautour and fifth Erica Trickett won her third straight provincial title earlier this month at the Re/ Max Centre-st. John’s Curling Club in fine fashion.
Heather Strong and her St. John’s team of Brooke Godsland, Sarah Paul and Kathryn Cooper were 6-0 after the round-robin in the seven-team field, and had to beaten twice to be denied the title.
Curtis, who finished 5-1, beat up on Strong 8-1 in five ends in the first championship game, forcing a deciding game Sunday morning.
The result was another blowout in favour of Curtis, this time by a 7-1 decision.
It will be a different Scotties event this year with 16 teams taking part, up from 12 rinks. The four-team qualification round has been scrapped and instead of one big round-robin draw, the field is now divided into two eight-team pools.
Newfoundland and Labrador is entered in a pool with Team Canada (Michelle Englot), Alberta (Casey Scheidegger), Ontario (Hollie Duncan), British Columbia (Kesa Van Osch), Prince Edward Island (Robyn Macphee), Quebec (Émilia Gagné) and Nunavut (Amie Shackleton).
For the first time, every provincial and territorial association has a direct entry into the main draw. Those 14 teams will be joined by Team Canada’s Englot — a replacement for Rachel Homan, whose team is curling in the Pyeongchang Olympics — along with the
winner of Friday night’s play-in game between Chelsea Carey of Calgary and Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson.
The wild-card game is a matchup of the top two teams from the Canadian Team Ranking System list that didn’t qualify out of their provincial/ territorial championships. Carey holds the No. 2 CTRS position while Einarson is fourth.
Round-robin play begins today with the top four teams in each pool advancing to the championship pool starting Thursday. The top four teams from that will advance to the Page playoffs.
Curtis is the 2007 Canadian junior champion, and world junior silver medallist.