Inexperience hurts Gushulak rink

Matt Gushulak’s rink knew they would be in tough against the top teams in Northwestern Ontario at the junior men’s playdowns here last week.
While Gushulak and third Tyler Bell were back for another crack at a Northwestern title, this time they were teamed up with new second Trevor Bonot and new lead Gary Pattison.
And that inexperience showed as Gushulak finished out of the running for a berth at the provincial playdowns with a 2-4 record.
Andrew Mikkelsen (Port Arthur), who finished atop the seven-team field with a 5-1 mark, and Joe Scharf (Fort William), second at 4-2, advanced to the provincials Jan. 13-16 in Dryden.
“We weren’t too disappointed. We had a young team with two new guys,” said Gushulak of their showing. “We tried our best but we didn’t expect [to advance].
“We didn’t have a lot of experience . . . it’s really tough when all four [players] haven’t curled [together] before,” he noted.
In fact, when they took to the ice and beat Jamie Armstrong (Geraldton) 9-5 in their opener last Thursday afternoon, it was their first time ever playing together.
And when you put that inexperience up against the likes of Mikkelsen, a former world junior all-star, you can’t expect to sweep past the competition.
And they didn’t. First they were trounced 10-2 by Scharf on Thursday night, then lost 9-5 to Mikkelsen on Friday morning. But their key defeat came with a 9-3 setback to Chris Ramsaywack (Marathon).
They got back on the winning track with a 9-5 win over Richard Chitty (Balmertown), then wrapped up round-robin play with a 7-6 extra-end loss to Dustin Kroeker (Dryden).
In that last game, which had no impact on the standings, both teams had decided to have a draw to the button in case they were tied after the shortened eight-end game.
Kroeker nestled his shot a tad closer to the button in the four-foot for the victory.
Bell, who will moving on to university next year like Gushulak, agreed the lack of experience cost them.
“For sure, we could have very easily have been 3-3 or [4-2] except for a few bad breaks,” he remarked. “We lacked the experience with our front end, and we hadn’t curled at all, but we’re actually happy with our finish.”
“If we could have beaten Mikkelsen, it would have really put us in the mindset to go further,” said Gushulak, who earned a silver medal with the Muskies at the OFSAA championships a few years ago.
“We expected to have tough games against the Thunder Bay teams. We expected two losses and then we were going to go from there,” he reasoned.
Gushulak felt the turning point was the loss in their game against Ramsaywack on Friday afternoon.
Tied 1-1 after four ends, Ramsaywack broke the game open with a four-ender in the fifth. Gushulak did battle back with singles in the seventh and eighth to pull to within 5-3 but Ramsaywack iced the victory with another four-ender in the ninth.
“The games we won, we curled really good but the games we lost, we curled bad,” Gushulak offered.
“The loss to Marathon was the toughest because that’s a team that we know we can beat,” admitted Bell. “Whereas against Mikkelsen, you have to be perfect to beat them.”