Lucas Punkari
Having just missed out on reaching his goal of making the playoffs at last week’s Northern Ontario men’s curling playdowns in Nipigon, Stratton native Trevor Bonot had a number of different feelings in his head as he returned to Thunder Bay.
“It was frustrating and kind of disappointing at times, but it was still an okay week,” Bonot remarked.
“There are still positives that I can take from the week, though, as I gained more experience playing with the best teams in the province, and learned how to manage things when they don’t go your way,” he noted.
“I personally struggled a lot so trying to win games when that is happening is something that you can always learn from.”
Bonot and his Port Arthur Curling Club rink, which included third Al Macsemchuk, second Chris Briand, and Devlin native Mike Badiuk at lead, finished the week at 3-5, which left them tied for fifth with Jeff Currie (Thunder Bay), Matt Dumontelle (New Liskeard), and Mike Jakubo (Copper Cliff).
Brad Jacobs of Sault Ste. Marie captured his fourth-straight provincial crown Sunday with a 6-5 extra-end win over Sudbury’s Robbie Gordon, and now is headed to next month’s Tim Hortons Brier in Edmonton.
Bonot began the round-robin with a bang last Wednesday, earning back-to-back wins over Dumontelle and Currie by scores of 11-5 and 6-4, respectively.
“The Dumontelle game was a battle, as it always is with him, as he makes a lot of big shots,” he noted.
“We just kept it close and finally in the ninth end, we were able to get a six-ender to pretty much wrap the game up.
“In the game against Currie, we got off to a good start and stole two early,” Bonot added.
“But I ended up having a draw against three in fifth end that ended up going to the back of the 12-foot, so we had to claw back from that,” he stressed.
The first setback of the week came Thursday afternoon against two-time Brier and world champ Al Hackner of Thunder Bay, with Bonot coming out on the short end of a 7-3 decision to the “Iceman.”
“That game just came down to one miss in the fourth,” Bonot recalled.
“I tried to make a double for two and I ended up curling up and jamming and giving them three points.
“Prior to my shot, they were only sitting one, and that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the game as we were unable to claw back from that,” he added.
Bonot bounced back that night, however, with an 8-6 win over Gordon to improve to 3-1.
“We just played a solid game from start to finish there,” he recalled.
Friday proved to be a day to forget for the Lakehead rink, though, as they dropped all three of their games.
Their first loss of the day came at the hands of Jakubo—a 5-1 setback in eight ends that Bonot said was much closer than the final score indicated.
“We ran up against a hot last-rock thrower in Matt Seabrook, who pretty much made everything against us,” he noted.
“He was making freezes left, right, and centre. And every time we had an end set up, he would make a great shot to change things.”
Then in the afternoon draw, Bonot went right to the limit with Jacobs before falling 2-1 to the eventual champions, who finished the week with an
unbeaten record.
“You usually don’t see seven blank ends in a game anymore,” Bonot laughed.
“It was a very interesting game with a lot of rocks in play and we had them in trouble in almost every end,” he added.
“[But] their third Ryan Fry was pretty much making everything and Brad was, as well.”
Bonot then finished the day with a third-straight loss—an 8-4 defeat to Jordan Chandler in a game that proved to be the only win for the North Bay rink.
“It was one of those games where we were flat after taking on Jacobs and we just never had the momentum going,” Bonot explained.
“Chandler, himself, played really well and they are a really good team, but they just had a lot of last-rock games that they came out on the losing end of.”
Heading into their final round-robin game Saturday morning, Bonot needed to beat Thunder Bay’s Bryan Burgess—and also get a little bit of help from his fellow curlers—in order to force a tie-breaker later that day.
But that scenario did not play out as Burgess came away with a 6-3 win.
“If everything had played out [our way], there could have been a massive tie for second place,” said Bonot.
“But none of the teams that were in that mix won their last game, including us,” he noted.
“We were up in the game and then a misplaced guard on one of my last rocks in the sixth allowed Bryan to come through a hole and make a double take-out to get three on us,” he lamented.
With men’s league play winding down in Thunder Bay, Bonot already is looking ahead at the 2013-14 season, which will get underway at the end of September.
“In Thunder Bay, there really isn’t a lot of downtime before you have to start thinking about next year as the teams here tend to shake up right away,” he noted.
“We’ve already talked about our future plans for our team a little bit, and we’re going to be sitting down and go over our year and see where that will take us,” he added.
