Canada Cup a letdown for curler

Joey Payeur

A miss here and a few inches there were all it took to delay the Olympic ambitions of Jenna Walsh and her curling mates until another day.
The Devlin native, who plays second for Sudbury skip Tracy Fleury, was displeased with how things unfolded as her team went 2-4 to finish in last place in the seven-rink field at last week’s 2016 Home Hardware Canada Cup of Curling in Brandon, Man.
Capturing the title would have guaranteed Team Fleury (including third Crystal Webster, lead Amanda Gates, and absent fifth member Jennifer Wylie) a spot in the 2017 Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings Olympic trials next December in Ottawa.
Instead, Walsh (nee Enge) was left to account for what went wrong.
“The team wasn’t at our best and we had quite a few missed shots and missed opportunities, and we were not very happy by the end of the week,” she remarked.
“It was definitely difficult out there.
“Tracy played very well for the rest of us, but Amanda and I at the front end weren’t setting things up for her very well,” Walsh admitted.
Coming off winning the Sunova Spiel in East St. Paul, Man. last Monday, Team Fleury was looking to continue its strong play into the Canada Cup.
But against a field of some of Canada’s best rinks, there was no easing into the competition.
First up was defending Olympic champ Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg, who already has a trials berth locked up and ended up winning it all by beating Ottawa’s Rachel Homan 9-5 in the final.
Jones stole two in the second to go up 3-0 and had Fleury playing catch-up the rest of the game en route to a 6-4 loss.
“You don’t want to get down early to a good hitting team like Jones,” noted Walsh.
“You’re pretty much out of the game at that point unless miraculously you can use some corner guards and get rocks behind them.”
Fleury regrouped to nip two-time Scotties finalist Val Sweeting from Edmonton 7-6 in an extra end.
“We had a little bit of luck and good play,” said Walsh about the 10th end, when her squad held Sweeting to a single with the hammer rather than a game-winning deuce.
“We had a rock half-hidden behind our rock at the front but [Sweeting] only needed to hit both to score two,” recalled Walsh. who struggled in the game as she shot only 58 percent in her worst performance of the week.
“But she only got the back one.
“And then in the extra end, we had a rock behind a guard and she only needed to draw the four-foot to be in position to win, but she was a little heavy with the shot,” Walsh added.
Facing two-time national champ Homan next, Fleury fell behind 3-0 but rallied with three in the fourth and a steal of one in the fifth to go up 4-3.
Then just like that, the offensive game for Fleury’s rink ran into a brick wall as Homan scored two in the sixth and stole one in the ninth to win 6-4.
“In the first half of the game, we had two other opportunities for three and we could have been up six,” fumed Walsh.
“Homan’s team are closers.”
With desperation time nearing, Fleury fell behind defending Manitoba provincial champ Kerri Einarson 7-4 after giving up a steal of three in the seventh.
But with a third loss staring them in the face, Fleury used some solid front-end work from Walsh and Gates to grab two in the eighth before stealing singles in the ninth and 10th to escape with an 8-7 win.
“We know we’re a very good stealing team,” Walsh said. “It’s almost simpler to have our backs against the wall because we know what to do to get points.
“Amanda and I set up the ends, there was some missed runbacks for the other team, and we were real lucky,” she conceded.
“It’s a situation you definitely don’t want to be in, but you’ve got to do what you need to to win the game sometimes,” she reasoned.
Just one win on Day 3 would have been enough to get Fleury at least a share of a tie-breaker.
The first chance came against defending national champ Chelsea Carey from Edmonton, with Fleury playing air-tight defensively over the first four ends in taking a 2-0 lead.
But Carey struck for three in the fifth, then added deuces in the seventh and ninth ends to emerge with a 7-4 win.
“There was a lot of rocks in play in the second half of the game,” recounted Walsh.
“We were also using up a lot of time on our shot clock and we had to throw our rocks in the last few ends quickly so we didn’t run out of time and we didn’t get the result we wanted.
“To quote Amanda, it’s hard to throw a guard when you’re running in the hack to save precious seconds,” she added.
Fleury still had a chance to force a three-way tie-breaker with Sweeting and Einarson, but lost her final game to two-time world junior champ Kelsey Rocque of Edmonton 6-5 to miss out.
Ironically, Walsh said it was the best game the team played all week.
“Kelsey played amazing against us,” noted Walsh, whose team had the hammer trailing 6-4 in the 10th but only could score one.
“Tracy had a double for the win but she didn’t have quite enough weight to kick out the other rock at the back of the four-foot.
“It’s a game of inches at this level,” Walsh added. “You have to be so precise with every shot.”
But the flame of hope still burns for Walsh to represent Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Her rink almost is assured, with its accumulated successes over this season and last, to earn a berth in the 2017 Road to the Roar pre-trials competition in Summerside, P.E.I. next November.
The top two finishers from that event will move on to Ottawa.
“We know we just have to win one bonspiel to get into the ‘Roar,’” said Walsh, whose job with Canada Post will leave her sidelined from competition until the new year.
“I would love to play this week [in Sault Ste. Marie in the third event of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling season],” she admitted.
“But there’s work issues. It’s Christmas and I have a lot of parcels to deliver this time of year.”