Staff
Judy LaBelle has a ticket to Blind River.
The local skip, along with her team of third Nancy Evans, second Mary Beth Tkachuk, and lead Trudy Badiuk, finished tied for first with three other rinks at 3-2 at the senior women’s inter-region 1-2 tournament at the Fort Frances Curling Club over the weekend.
In fact, the top five rinks of the six-team tournament advanced to the provincial playdowns, to be held Feb. 25-28.
LaBelle opened with a pair of wins over Port Arthur rinks, downing Marion Clark 9-1 on Thursday night before taking a 12-6 decision over Cristiene Hali-Teravainen on Friday morning.
LaBelle then fell to Kenora’s Peggy Taylor 8-1 later Friday for Taylor’s lone victory—meaning hers was the odd rink out for a provincial berth.
LaBelle was unable to recover in her next game against Port Arthur’s Barbara Ward, losing 9-3 on Saturday morning.
She did finish on the winning track, though, edging Fort William’s Joy Lappalainen 9-7 that night to advance.
On the men’s side, former Canadian and world champ Al Hackner had no trouble punching his ticket to the provincials.
Deciding the second and final berth wasn’t quite so easy, though.
Bruce Melville (Port Arthur) and Larry Chepsiuk (Fort William), who both sported 3-2 records after the round-robin, faced off in a tie-breaker Sunday morning.
Chepsiuk ultimately captured the second spot at the provincials in Blind River with a 10-4 thumping.
Hackner already had wrapped up first place by virtue of his 5-0 mark.
Ken McKinnon (Fort Frances), whose rink included third Jim Jackson, second Ron Martinuk, and lead Sandy Haney, brought up the rear of the standings with a 1-4 record.
The locals lost their first two games—10-2 to Ken Anderson (Red Lake) on Thursday night and then 9-5 to Randy Fossum (Port Arthur) on Friday morning before recovering with a 7-6 edging of Chepsiuk that night.
McKinnon wrapped up play with defeats to Hackner and Melville on Saturday by scores of 10-6 and 8-3, respectively.
The winners in Blind River will advance to the national tournament March 20-27, with the national champs to represent Canada at the worlds April 16-24 in Chelyabinsk, Russia.
