Dan Falloon
It all came down to Sunday morning.
With Kim Beaudry and Kenora’s Crystal Wojtowicz both sitting at 2-0, the round-robin finale between the two rinks essentially morphed into a tournament final.
At stake: a berth in the club provincial playdowns April 8-11 at the Port Arthur Curling Club in Thunder Bay.
When the last rock settled, it was Beaudry and her rink of third Kelly Wagar, second Teresa McFayden, and lead Jeannie Sheppard left standing with the Region 1 crown.
“We had a really close game with Kenora,” Beaudry said.
“It was pretty much only a one-point difference for much of the game,” she added.
After Beaudry finally was able to put some separation between the teams with a pair in the seventh, it was up to Wojtowicz to tie but Beaudry ran the Kenora skip out of rocks.
“I didn’t have to shoot my last rock because they couldn’t get their two points to tie the game,” she noted.
Beaudry feels well-prepared for the club provincials, having appeared on the provincial stage previously in both the women’s and mixed divisions.
Even with the experience, however, she has no plans to take the other teams lightly.
“It’ll be good competition, it’ll be pretty competitive,” she stressed.
Beaudry opened with a 10-3 win over Val Stus (Atikokan) and then an 11-3 rout against Carol George (Sioux Lookout).
Beaudry fell behind 1-0 after one to Stus, but stormed back with a pair in the second.
Stus gradually got the lead back with singles in the third and fourth ends, but Beaudry began to rev up.
The locals came up with a single in the fifth before stealing one in the sixth and then putting the game away with a huge steal of five in the seventh.
Against George, Beaudry came out with a better start, striking for a pair in the first and then stealing one in the second.
George put up a single in the third, but Beaudry came right back with three in the fourth to surge ahead 6-1.
George battled back to get within 6-3 with singles in the fifth and sixth, but Beaudry again came up with a five-ender in the seventh to close it out.
The final match with Wojtowicz started positively for Beaudry, with singles in the first two ends.
Wojtowicz evened the game with a deuce in the third, then jumped into the lead with a steal of one in the fifth.
But Beaudry counted a single in the sixth to tie before striking for two in the seventh in what turned out to be the game-winning points.
