Lawes clings to championship-round hopes after B.C. steals win

KAMLOOPS — Heading into Wednesday, Kaitlyn Lawes was the only team at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts to not give up a steal.

Unfortunately for Lawes and her Wild Card No. 1 teammates, their streak ended at the worst possible time.

After a scoreless ninth, Lawes kept the hammer for the 10th end against British Columbia’s Clancy Grandy with the score tied at 5-5. Grandy — who was enjoying home-ice advantage with most of the fans at the Sandman Centre in Kamloops cheering her on — put the pressure on Lawes. Down to her final throw, the skip out of Fort Rouge was forced to attempt a tricky soft-weight takeout with both teams having rocks touching different sides of the button.

Lawes missed, Grandy won.

“Yeah, it felt really good. We hadn’t given up any steals all week so I felt confident throwing that last rock,” Lawes told the Free Press.

“Unfortunately, today it was very straight, and that rock just needed to curl a tiny bit more and it didn’t.”

The loss dropped Lawes, who played the late draw against winless Nunavut, to 3-3 and put her in serious danger of missing the championship round at curling nationals. Going into Wednesday night, Grandy, Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges, and Alberta’s Kayla Skrlik were all tied at 4-2 for the final two playoff spots in Pool A.

Nova Scotia’s Christina Black is 4-3.

Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson of Gimli tops Pool A at 6-0 heading into the final day of round-robin action.

The top three teams from the two nine-team pools advance to Friday. From there, four teams qualify for the Page playoffs. The semifinal and final take place Sunday.

“She’s played in so many big games you know that nerves aren’t going to be a factor in a scenario like that,” said second Jocelyn Peterman.

“We were happy to be tied with hammer, the other team just made a nice shot and Kaitlyn had a hard one to make. It just works out that way sometimes.”

Lawes will likely finish the round robin at 5-3 after playing Nunavut and then Prince Edward Island (1-5) Thursday night. To sneak into the top three, she’s going to need some help.

Alberta closes out against Canada and B.C.

B.C. plays Alberta and Quebec.

Quebec finishes with Alberta and Nova Scotia.

There’s a lot that is up in the air.

Only one tiebreaker game will be played Friday morning for third place, if necessary. If more than two teams tied for third place, teams will be eliminated by head-to-head record or accumulated last stone draw distance until there are only two teams left to play one tiebreaker draw.

Lawes’ first two losses came against Canada and Quebec. The good news for Lawes is she currently owns the best last-stone draw distance in the pool.

“We’re just gonna leave it all on the ice and see how it all unfolds. I have no idea what everyone else’s records are, so I assume that our playoff hopes are pretty slim, but we’ll just try to win the rest of our games and see what happens,” said Lawes.

Over in Pool B, East St. Paul’s Meghan Walter said goodbye to her playoff hopes. Ontario’s Rachel Homan (4-2) knocked off Walter, who turned 21 on Wednesday, 9-5 in the morning to push the third and final wild card team out of contention.

Walter, 2-4, plays Yukon and Newfoundland and Labrador today before returning home.

Walter beat Lawes in the provincial semifinal last month before losing the championship game to Jennifer Jones.

“It’s honestly been incredible. We got off to more of a rocky start than we had hoped. Coming into this, we’ve honestly had a great last few events so it was definitely a little rocky, but we have gotten better as the games have gone by,” said Team Walter second Sara Oliver.

“So, we’ve always been improving, and hoping to always improve obviously, so we have two more games and we want to come out firing.”

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Taylor Allen
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Eighteen years old and still in high school, Taylor got his start with the Free Press on June 1, 2011. Well, sort of…

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