Lucas Punkari
A few days after being crowned provincial champ, and qualifying for this year’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Red Deer, Alta., the sense of what she had accomplished was just starting to hit former Muskie curler Jenna Enge.
“It’s starting to sink in a little bit,” noted the Devlin native, who plays second for the Tracy Horgan rink from Sudbury.
“We’ve had about two days to get all of our stuff together with our forms, and to decide who our fifth and our coach will be, plus my family is getting things ready to go to Red Deer for the Scotties,” she said Monday afternoon.
“It’s pretty crazy as soon as you win and it’s like a whirlwind.”
The 23-year-old Enge, who now lives in Thunder Bay and works for Canada Post, was part of a dramatic 7-6 win over defending champ Rachel Homan of Ottawa on Sunday in Kenora, which gave the Horgan rink, which also includes third Jennifer Seabrook and lead Amanda Gates, its first Ontario title.
“The goal for our entire team going into Kenora was win the whole thing,” said Enge, who was making her second provincial appearance.
“For the rest of the team, this was their fifth time that they had been to the provincials and they bring a lot of experience, which has been a huge help for me, especially last year.
“I would have to say that gave us a little bit of an edge going in,” she reasoned.
The Horgan rink, based out of the Idylwylde Golf & Curling Club in Sudbury, with Enge flying in from Thunder Bay to join the rest of the team for various events, finished second after the round-robin portion with a 7-2 record, with their lone setbacks coming to Homan and former provincial champ Jenn Hanna of Ottawa.
“I have to say during the round-robin that we had played the best that we had ever played,” Enge recalled.
“We had some days that we were a little down compared to some other days, but we were able to pull through in those situations.
“We had never beaten [former provincial champs] Sherry Middaugh [Coldwater] and Krista McCarville [Thunder Bay] before at the playdowns, and it felt really good to get those monkeys off our back,” she enthused.
Finishing second earned the Horgan rink a spot in the 1 vs. 2 Page playoff game Saturday afternoon against Homan, who had run the table with a 9-0 record, with the Ottawa
foursome stealing singles over the final three ends to take a 5-3 triumph.
That setback dropped Horgan into the semi-final Sunday morning against Middaugh, which they won 7-3 in nine ends to knock off the Coldwater crew for the second time during the playdowns.
“I think our whole team curled around 100 percent in the game against Sherry,” Enge said.
“We knew going into that game that we had beaten her before during the round-robin and we just wanted to bring back that feeling when we played her for a second time, and that helped us in being successful,” she reasoned.
A few hours later, the Horgan rink was set to hit the ice once again to face the still undefeated Homan foursome.
“Our strategy was just to go all out or go home,” Enge explained.
“We knew that Rachel’s team had a lot of pressure on them being past champions,” she noted. “And even though we are a young team, their team is younger than we are now and they are still learning.
“I’m not saying that we were that much more experienced, as they have more experience than us on a national stage.
“But as our skip [Tracy] said to us before the game, ‘We’re probably the second-best team here, but we’re the only team that can beat the first-place team.’”
After scoring a deuce with the hammer (last rock) in the second end, things quickly turned around and Horgan found herself trailing 5-2 by the fifth-end break.
“It might have been a little bit of nerves or adrenaline, but thing started to just fall apart for us after the second end,” Enge remarked.
“During the break, we had a quick team meeting where we pumped each other back up and said that there’s nothing to lose for the rest of the game.
“We told one another that ‘whatever’s going to happen will happen, and we just need to make sure that we throw our two shots in each end and do the best that we can.’”
It evidently worked. After taking two in the sixth, Horgan held Homan to a single in the seventh, then scored one in the eighth to trail 6-5.
Homan then blanked the ninth—retaining the hammer coming home.
With Horgan needed a steal of one to force an extra end, Homan tried an aggressive run-back with her first stone in the 10th.
But it ended up taking out her own stone and allowing Horgan to lie two in the house.
“Going into that end, I didn’t think we were going to win at all,” Enge admitted.
“All she [Homan] had to do was peel her guards, and then we would maybe have a shot at tying up the game and maybe going to an extra end.
“I was just speechless when she called the run-back to peel us off of the four-foot and when she ended up jamming it, it was a surreal feeling.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Enge recalled.
After Horgan drew into the house to sit three with her final shot, all Homan had to do was grab a piece of the button on her last stone to nab her second-straight provincial title—or have her draw attempt stop full four-foot to force the extra end.
Her shot would end up staying to the outside and didn’t curl enough, however, giving Horgan the unlikely steal of two and a trip to Red Deer.
“Right after Rachel’s draw came in, I looked at the house and asked, ‘Did we win?’” said Enge.
“I took a second to try and process everything that had happened, and the feeling I had when I realized we had won just awesome.
“There are no other words to explain it.”
After the awards ceremony took place on the ice, Enge immediately received congratulations from her supporters who were able to be in Kenora for the game, along with those who were not.
“My parents [Bill and Linda] are in Florida right now, so they were actually watching the game on Skype thanks to one of my friends,” Enge noted.
“My Dad called me five minutes after the game, and I could tell he was a little teary-eyed as he’s not the kind of guy to cry all that much.
“My brother [Travis] and my sister-in-law [Tena] were there watching with their kids, and my boyfriend [Ben Walsh] was there watching with his mother, as well, which was nice.
“Also the support from Kenora was amazing,” added Enge. “And in the final they were rooting us on as we were a Northern Ontario team.”
In addition to all of that support, Enge also was quick to thank those from this area who have helped out along the way.
“The support of my personal sponsors in Fort Frances, particularly the Todd Moxham and Tom Pearson family, as well as Mark Loney of Emo, has meant so much throughout the year, and I can’t thank them enough,” she stressed.
“Also, I need to thank everyone who sent our team e-mails throughout the round-robin as their messages gave us an extra boost of confidence before each game.”
After returning to Thunder Bay, Enge already has been back out on the ice sharpening her game before she meets up with the rest of her team in Sudbury next week, where they will be having a team send-off party and also a few practices before they fly out to the Scotties on Feb. 16.
The event itself gets underway on Feb. 18 and will run until the final on Feb. 26.
“I think the moment that we step into the arena for the first time, and when we play our first game [against P.E.I.’s Kim Dolan], is when everything is going to sink in for me,” Enge remarked.
Despite this being their first time at the Scotties, the Horgan rink has gone up against three of the teams in this year’s field before on the cash ’spiel circuit, having faced Kerry Galusha (Yukon/Northwest Territories), B.C.’s Kelly Scott, and Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones.
“Just in looking at the field of teams that are going to be there, it’s going to be a lot of fun,” Enge enthused.
“Our initial goal is to make the playoffs, and I think that’s a pretty obtainable goal for right now,” she added.
“But the main thing is to get our feet under us and see what we can do.”
