Jamie Mountain
It was quite the ride for Hailey Beaudry’s Northern Ontario rink during the Canadian Junior Curling Championships that ran last week in Shawinigan, Que.
The squad, which curls out of the Fort William C.C. in Thunder Bay, did qualify for the four-game championship round after finishing preliminary play with a 3-3 record.
But while they remained mostly competitive, it didn’t translate into wins as the rink lost all four games to wind up with a 3-7 record overall.
Beaudry’s rink, comprised of fellow ex-Muskie Erin Tomalty (lead), along with Kendra Lemieux (third) and Emily Cooney (second), opened the championship round last Wednesday with a 7-3 loss to Quebec.
They followed that up with a 9-2 defeat at the hands of New Brunswick on Thursday afternoon before dropping a narrow 5-3 decision to Nova Scotia that night.
Then they wrapped up play Friday with a 6-5 loss to Alberta.
“I really like the way [our] team played,” Beaudry told the Times on Saturday.
“It was a learning curve as none of us had ever played on arena ice,” she noted.
“Yes, each game had its ups and downs, and each game posed its own challenges to get over,” Beaudry added.
“But I am really happy with how the team played and I’m proud of how we did regardless that we did not make the playoffs.”
Beaudry admitted their unfamiliarity with arena ice really challenged the team in games over the course of the tournament and forced them to adjust on the fly.
“I believe that the biggest challenge for our rink was reading the ice,” she remarked.
“So for myself, I know that there was a number of shots that were misses from the house, either by putting the broom in the wrong place or missing a line call.
“Our games totally picked up as the week went on once we were more comfortable with the ice,” Beaudry noted.
“But that just means we can hopefully be better prepared for more experiences like this down the road.”
Although the squad didn’t make it to the weekend playoffs, which saw Nova Scotia beat Quebec 5-3 on Sunday for the women’s title, Beaudry believes their experience playing at nationals will be beneficial moving forward.
“This nation, in specific, is very unique in the sense that a large number of these curlers are all developing, and will likely go on and continue to curl in men’s and women’s competitions,” Beaudry said.
“They also, like our team, play the very respectable and skilled teams in their local regions, as well, so everyone brings a lot of different experience and talent to the game.
“We are going to use each game [we played] as something to learn from and better us for our OUA [Ontario University Athletics] playdowns in a few weeks,” she vowed.
“We, as a team, learned that one thing we would like to work to achieve more is really capitalizing and taking our two points with the hammer, as we found we struggled with that [last] week most of all.”
Up next for the Beaudry rink is the Thunder Bay Major League playoffs that begin this Saturday, where they remain in the constellation side.
Then they’ll compete at the OUA playdowns Feb. 15-19 in Sault Ste. Marie.
In junior men’s play, meanwhile, the Tanner Horgan rink from Sudbury, representing Northern Ontario, was dumped 8-4 by B.C. in the men’s final Sunday.
Horgan had earned a bye to the final with a combined record of 8-2 overall.
B.C. advanced to the weekend playoffs after beating Alberta in a tie-breaker Friday, then topped Manitoba 9-8 in Saturday’s semi-final.
Manitoba advanced to the semi-finals after winning a tie-breaker of their own 7-4 against Ontario on Friday.
