Staff
There will be no local representation at the men’s provincial playdowns being held here Feb. 10-14.
Lorne Jackson and his team of Don DeBenedet, Raymond Roy, and Todd Moxham lost twice to Chris Briand (Thunder Bay), including a 8-1 defeat on Saturday that sent them packing from the inter-regional qualifying event in Atikokan.
They had opened with a 9-3 loss to Briand on Thursday, beat Greg Kawahara (Thunder Bay) 9-2 on Friday morning, but then dropped to the ‘C’-side with an 8-2 loss to Brian Adams (Thunder Bay) that afternoon.
That set up the re-match with Briand on Saturday.
The other local rink of Anthony Smaha, Brian Johnstone, Craig Armstrong, and Butch Wensley opened the inter-regional qualifying event with a 9-4 loss to Adams, then lost their first match on the ‘B’-side to Mike Assad (Thunder Bay) by an 8-5 score.
They recovered by beating Allen Macsemchuk (Kakabeka Falls) 8-6 to stay alive, but then ran into Adams again—this time losing 8-6 to be bounced from further contention.
Art Lappalainen (Thunder Bay) ended up winning the ‘A’ final while Assad took the ‘B’ final and Adams the ‘C’ side. As such, all three punched their tickets to the provincial playdowns here next month.
In related news, Brent Lemieux (Blind River) and Rob Thomas (Sault Ste. Marie) advanced out of the four-rink double round-robin event for the Zone 3-4 Inter-Regional in Nipigon.
Rob Gordon, Mike Jakubo, and Matt Dumontelle, meanwhile, advanced out of the Zone 5-6 Inter-Regional held in New Liskeard.
This weekend’s qualifiers join the previous eight qualifying teams of Cory Nephin (Geraldton), Mike Pozihun (Thunder Bay), Murray Affleck (Keewatin), Tim Phillips (North Bay), Claude Lapointe (McIntyre), Al Belec (Blind River), Brad Jacobs (Sault Ste. Marie), and Bryan Burgess (Thunder Bay).
The provincial champ crowned here advances to the Tim Hortons Brier.
