Joey Payeur
They’re still in high school but the Muskie girls’ rink has been working on their communication degrees all season.
Now they not only talk a good game, they play one, too.
Skip Tory Beaudry and her crew of third Anika Beaudry, second Katrina Slomke, and co-leads Ashley Payne and Andrea Schram were on the same page in reclaiming the NorWOSSA crown it last owned two years ago after stringing together a 4-0 mark at the league finals Sunday and Monday at the Fort Frances Curling Club.
“The strongest part of our game throughout the two days was our communication,” said Anika Beaudry.
“It was the best it’s been all season and something we’ve been working on for a while.”
“I find every bonspiel we go to, it gets better and better,” agreed Schram.
“And it helps our team dynamics so that way, we play better and better each game,” she reasoned.
The Muskies and runner-up Sioux Lookout Warriors (3-1) both advance to the NWOSSAA championships here Feb. 27-28 for the right to go to the OFSAA playdowns March 22-25 in North Bay.
Fort High ruled NWOSSAA last year with skip Erin Tomalty at the helm. Now it’s Tory Beaudry’s turn to steer the black-and-gold ship back to the all-Ontarios.
“We hope to bring it all the way to OFSAA but we have to play one game at a time,” Beaudry warned.
“We’ve got to play even harder the next couple of weeks and fine-tune anything that needs to be fixed, and prepare for our competition.”
The Muskies bombed the Atikokan Voyageurs 10-1 in their first game Sunday, then powered past defending champion Sioux Lookout 7-5.
“That Sioux Lookout game was our most important,” said Slomke. “We knew we had to win that one.
“The key was keeping our morale high because Sioux Lookout feeds off any negative energy we have,” she noted.
Fort High then dumped the St. Thomas Aquinas Saints (Kenora) 10-1 on Monday but then still needed a closing win over the Rainy River Owls to avoid the possibility of playing at least one, if not two, tie-breakers for NorWOSSA gold.
Owls’ skip Mackenzie Jolicouer, third Aynsley Williams, second Madison Williams, and lead Lynelle Westover tried to rewrite the script–building a 4-0 lead with one in the first and then steals of one in the second and two more in the third.
That’s when the whole game changed as Tory Beaudry played a risky draw down the mostly-unused right side of the sheet that the efforts of her sweepers dragged enough to bite the four-foot and score four to tie the game.
“I had to make sure I wasn’t heavy or I would have missed it,” Beaudry recalled.
“Halfway down, it looked like it was going to be light. I had [the front end] scared because I was right behind them yelling at them,” she chuckled.
“I’ve never swept that hard in my life,” Slomke chimed in with a smile.
“There was definitely a little pressure there.”
Jolicouer drew too wide to allow Fort High to steal two in the fifth, then rubbed off a Muskie stone to yield another steal of one in the sixth to make it 7-4.
A wreck on a guard out front by Jolicouer meant another theft of two for Fort High, who then ran the Owls out of rocks in the eighth.
The entire Muskie contingent will warm up for the NWOSSAA playdowns by participating in the U18 girls’ provincial championship Feb. 23-26 in Longlac.
The Owls (2-2) beat Atikokan 10-5 before losing 11-3 to Sioux Lookout.
Rainy River then clobbered St. Thomas Aquinas 12-0 before falling to the Muskies.
