Dan Falloon
Tirzah Keffer and her Muskie girls’ rink said they were just happy to have made it to the all-Ontarios in Toronto last week.
But looking at some of their results, it’s a little hard to believe.
Keffer and her rink of third Samantha Mueller, second Carley Busch, and lead Taylor Hartlin advanced to the quarter-finals Friday afternoon before being ousted in the very first appearance for a Muskie girls’ rink at OFSAA.
“We were just so excited to be there, and we did a lot better than we expected to do,” Keffer enthused.
The black-and-gold opened action last Wednesday with a 9-0 whitewash of Mary Ward before sliding past St. Joseph 7-4 on Thursday morning.
That afternoon brought a tougher test in the form of Northern C.I. and V.S. (Sarnia), who edged the Muskies 6-5.
Keffer then completed the round-robin with a 7-2 romp over Paul Dwyer (Oshawa) to finish second in Pool ‘B’ with a 3-1 record and advance to the quarter-finals.
Once there, the rink fell 7-2 to eventual bronze-medallist Timiskaming.
Still, Keffer was upbeat about the OFSAA experience, and was delighted to have been the squad to get longtime girls’ coach Dave Bondett into his first all-Ontarios.
“We’re thrilled that we were able to do this for him because it was the first team that he’s brought to OFSAA, too, so it was just great to do that for him,” she remarked.
“We were definitely excited,” she added. “We were at the Scarboro Curling Club, which is a beautiful curling club.
“It was built in 1912 and we were so pumped to play there.
“We were thrilled to be playing in the quarter-finals,” Keffer enthused. “We knew that the team coming up was a very hard team, and we just planned to play our best.
“We played the best we did in the tournament in that game.”
The Timiskaming rink had significantly more experience together than the black-and-gold, leaving the Muskies feeling proud of their effort against one of the province’s top foursomes.
“They had been together for six years . . . so they were really strong,” Keffer lauded. “Being together as a team for that long, that really works.
“Just experience and knowing everything about each other and how each other plays, it’s great for teamwork,” she explained.
With new additions Busch and Hartlin, her rink still was getting a feel for each other, although Keffer and Mueller were two holdovers from previous Muskie squads.
“We don’t have that yet because we’ve only been a team for one year,” she noted.
“We did so well considering that.”
Keffer admitted she was surprised by the level of competition at OFSAA, but that didn’t necessarily mean teams were tougher than anticipated.
“Some of the teams we faced in NWOSSAA were a lot harder than the teams we faced at OFSAA, but as we got into playoffs, those teams were very good,” she recalled.
One of the weaker rinks was Mary Ward, who failed to score a point against the Muskies.
“If they missed, then we just jumped at that,” Keffer said. “If we have one in the house, near the button, and they miss the shot to knock that out, then we’ll just guard it and they might miss their last shot.
“It’s just luck on some points, but good strategy, too.
“We definitely didn’t expect that at that level of competition, but it was great.”
The shutout may have helped the Muskies establish a bit of a reputation in the dressing room as a fearsome foursome, which amused Keffer and her teammates.
“Lots of the teams were nervous to play us because they know that Northern Ontario girls are really tough to beat, so it was kind of funny,” she laughed.
“We never expected to do so well, and it was just great.”
With Fort High’s first trip to OFSAA girls’ curling now in the books, the team can concentrate on getting the first trophy in the case.
Keffer said the team plans to remain intact next year, and already is making plans to be a tougher test in the coming year.
“We’re going to work a lot harder and see how we go,” she noted. “We’ll probably be doing dryland and working on more difficult things.
“Our coach [Dave Bondett] has a few things up his sleeve that he wants to try out on us.”
The team made sure there will be some unique memorabilia from the trip as the Fort Frances Curling Club sent them to Toronto with a large sheet of bristol board signed by some of the club members.
But the Muskies took the card a step further, asking nearly everyone they encountered to add their signatures to the souvenir.
“A whole bunch of people at the club signed it for good luck, so we got everybody that we met along the way to sign it,” she remarked. “We got the guy at the airport who was doing our sign-in to sign it, and the guy that shuttled us over to where we rented a car.
“We got the people at the hotel to sign it and waitresses, and the gold-medal team to sign it.”
But one of the last additions on Keffer’s list was perhaps the most exciting.
“We got Richard Hart, the third from Glenn Howard’s team, to sign it,” she beamed.
The card will be treasured by the team, although Keffer acknowledged she and her teammates haven’t yet decided what to do with the keepsake quite yet.
“We wanted to bring it back to the curling club in some way, to share it with them,” she said. “Or we’ll just hang onto it and put some pictures up at the curling club.
“But it was definitely good luck.”
Keffer credited Bondett and her mom, Peg, for helping to make the trip a success, and also was happy to hear that local fans were keeping an eye out for the results of the tournament.
“Everyone in Fort was behind us, and that was just awesome,” she enthused.
