ST. CATHARINES, Ont. — Score Round 1 to Michelle Englot.
Manitoba wrapped up its Scotties Tournament of Hearts round-robin schedule Thursday night taking on Ontario’s Rachel Homan in a matchup that will ultimately play out again the following evening in the Page 1-2 playoff.
Englot emerged victorious 9-5 to hand Homan her first loss at the Canadian women’s curling championship and set up the rematch. Both teams finished preliminary play atop of the leaderboard with identical 10-1 records and thanks to this win, Englot earned the hammer advantage for the Page playoffs.
How big is it to have that going into Round 2?
“Really important against a team like this,” Englot said. “We started out with hammer today and took advantage of it and hopefully we can do the same tomorrow.”
A repeat in the 1-2 game will send Englot straight through to Sunday’s championship game while the loser gets an extra life facing the 3-4 winner in the semifinal. Englot isn’t getting ahead of herself just yet though.
“One game at a time, right? To win that game would be big but you’re not out of it if you don’t, so you do have that extra life, which is always a little bit of a safety net, I guess,” Englot said. “But getting to the final would be the ideal scenario so that’s what we’ll attempt to do.”
The Regina native Englot has represented her home province of Saskatchewan eight times at the Tournament of Hearts, yet her best round-robin run has happened right now in her first season in Manitoba with Kate Cameron, Leslie Wilson and Raunora Westcott.
“It’s pretty incredible, actually,” Englot admitted. “Kate said I just needed to move to Manitoba a little earlier.”
Englot sent a message early — whether she wanted to or not — by capitalizing on a Homan miss in the first end to open with a huge four score, although that meant having to hold on and not let her opponent chip away.
“Oh my god, it’s like, ‘ah, we have to protect this lead for nine ends!’” Englot said. “It was good because getting off to a good start is always important in any game so again, against a team like Rachel’s is even more critical.”
Homan cut the deficit in half with a deuce in two and Englot looked at scoring big again in three with a multiple runback, but couldn’t quite get the right angles and settled for a single.
Homan actually had an opportunity to jump into the lead in the fourth end looking to blast out both of Englot’s rocks and score three, however, her shooter came straight down on the nose of a counter to give up a steal. Another stolen point in five made it a five-point advantage for Englot at the break. Homan split the rings to score two in the sixth to close the gap 7-4.
Englot sat shot rock prior to her last in seven with Homan freezing right on top. The crowd yelled out for Englot to just throw it away, but she went completely off script executing a precise hit to kick out the counter and score a deuce and put Homan on the ropes at 9-4.
“Initially I was going to throw it away and take our point but it was a big point, right,” Englot said. “So you go up five with three ends left, it’s a pretty big point in this because teams have been coming down from deficits all week long. Every point counts against a team like Rachel Homan.”
That ended up being the right call as Homan was forced to draw for just one in the eighth and shook hands.
So what’s the scenario?
While the Page 1-2 playoff is set, Saturday’s 3-4 game has yet to be fully determined.
Chelsea Carey and the defending Team Canada rink clinched at least one of the spots by climbing to an 8-2 record with an 11-5 win over Saskatchewan’s Penny Barker.
Carey has one game to go Friday morning against Alberta’s Shannon Kleibrink, but it’s still crucial for her to come out with the dub to ensure hammer advantage for her next game.
“We’ll get the hammer in the 3-4 game, so it matters for that and it matters to go into the playoffs on a good note,” Carey said. “We don’t want to come in on a loss if we can avoid it. It’s nice to play without huge pressure on, but there’s still some stuff on the line.”
Carey could face Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville, who can advance if she scores a win over Kerry Galusha of the Northwest Territories in the morning. If McCarville (7-3) loses she’ll need to play a tiebreaker Friday afternoon against Eve Belisle of Quebec.
Belisle finished at 7-4 with an 8-5 win against Marla Mallett of B.C. and will be praying to the curling gods (or Galusha) in order to draw even with the Northern Ontario squad.
If Canada loses to Alberta and Northern Ontario wins, then McCarville will have hammer advantage for the 3-4 game thanks to an 8-4 win during Thursday’s afternoon draw.
Carey on through the grind
Carey is looking forward to getting through Friday morning’s match and having some time to decompress.
“We’re tired. It’s a long week and these two days were back-to-back games and then we play again tomorrow morning, so that’s a lot,” Carey said. “We’re excited to go to bed tonight, get a little bit of sleep and then we’ll have a little bit of a break after tomorrow’s game because our game won’t be until Saturday, so we’ll have the rest of the day off tomorrow, which is nice.”
Team Carey’s 9-2 record last year earned them a spot in the 1-2 game, however, even if they match that total it’s just not quite good enough this time around and this will be a first for the Calgary skip.
“It just matters what game you get into,” Carey said. “The record isn’t really relevant. … It’s my third Scotties and this is the first time I’ve not been in the 1-2 game, so that’ll be different but that’s okay. We’ll come and grind through the 3-4 and see what happens.”
The moose is loose
It was a good day at the office for McCarville after doubling up on Carey in the afternoon draw and adding a 6-4 win over Mary Mattatall of Nova Scotia in the evening.
“We’re very happy with being 2-0 here today,” McCarville said. “It was definitely what we wanted coming into it — just already having three losses we don’t want to lose anymore — so coming in and beating Chelsea this afternoon and beating Nova Scotia right now is pretty good for us.”
While McCarville said the team hasn’t been scratching as hard for wins as they did last year en route to a silver medal, having three in the L column meant they couldn’t afford adding another one.
“Our backs are against the wall, we can’t lose or else it could possibly be a tiebreaker, so definitely we want to avoid any extra games we have to,” she said. “Definitely want to be in that 3-4 game Saturday.”
It was impossible for the team of McCarville, Kendra Lilly, Ashley Sippala and Sarah Potts to ignore their fans as it wasn’t just the moose calls piercing through the Meridian Centre, but also the rowdy and raucous cheering from family and friends. It hasn’t fazed the team’s performance on the ice judging by the two wins they picked up Thursday.
“Sarah’s husband was here a couple days ago, but our husbands are here now so they’re ready to cheer,” McCarville explained. “People have been asking if it’s a distraction, it’s actually a lot of fun. It keeps us maybe loose out there because we’re laughing and joking around because I think they’re probably making fools of themselves sometimes but they’re having fun and it’s fun for us.”