Oh, so close:

When you are the defending provincial champion, everybody is gunning to beat you.
And that’s exactly what Ashley Kallos and Krista Scarf, both of the Fort William Curling Club, did against the Angela Lee rink of Stratton at the Northwestern junior women’s curling playdowns in Marathon last week.
Lee–the defending provincial champ–failed to advance this year after losing to Kallos and Scharf in the playoffs. Instead, the latter two advanced to the provincials Jan. 13-16 in Dryden.
“That was their goal [to] try to beat us,” third Lisa Bolen said of the other 11 teams at the Northwesterns.
After breezing through pool play in first place with a 4-0 mark, Lee faced Kallos (who topped the other pool at 4-1)–with the winner earning the first of two berths up for grabs to the provincials.
That proved to be Kallos, who stole three in the 10th to cap a stunning 10-7 comeback victory over Lee, whose rink also included second Danielle Shrumm and lead Sarah Boily.
Lee had a chance to win the game with her last rock but her shot hit and rolled out for the steal of three.
“They were really on top of us and had three rocks in the house,” noted Lee, who admitted the loss was a difficult one to swallow especially after having jumped out to a 3-0 lead after just two ends.
But Kallos fought back to tie the game with three in the third. Then after the teams traded deuces in the fourth and fifth ends, Kallos took her first lead with a single in the sixth.
After the seventh was blanked, Lee scored a pair in the eighth to re-take the lead at 7-6. But Kallos didn’t quit–scoring a single in the ninth before icing the victory with three in the final end.
The loss left Lee to face Scharf, who had stayed alive by downing Lisa Foulds (Nipigon) 10-3 in the battle of second-place teams, on Sunday morning with the final provincial berth on the line.
But while Lee had beaten Scharf 9-2 during pool play, it was a different story this time as they were crushed 8-3 to see their hopes of a return trip to the nationals dashed.
After blanking the first end, Scharf scored a single in the second and then stole one in the third. Lee sliced into that lead with a single in the fourth but Scarf roared back with a three-ender in the fifth.
Lee got one of those back in the sixth but Scharf put the game out of reach with a pair in the eighth.
“It’s disappointing especially since we had such a good year [last year],” Lee said of their two losses.
“Unfortunately, we had a bad game. The first game we had a chance to win at the end but the second game didn’t go right–we couldn’t get it together.
“Coming from around here [Stratton], we’re lucky to get four girls to curl together so we weren’t expecting to go [to the provincials] but it would have been nice,” she added.
Still, all is not lost as the Lee rink gets ready to shoot for their second-straight gold medal in high school curling, starting with a NorWOSSA qualifier here next Tuesday.
It will be their final crack at winning OFSAA as Lee and Boily both are expected to graduate in June.
“We still have high school [curling]. That’s one of the first things we said,” Lee remarked. “Now we’re really going to focus on high school.”
“Oh yeah, for sure,” agreed Bolen. “The first thing we said when we got home was that we were going to focus on high school.”