Muskie curlers fall short of provincial bids

The Geraldton Curling Club hosted the NWOSSAA curling championships last week and one Muskie rink almost managed to punch a ticket to the all-Ontarios in Peterborough next week.
Almost.
The playdowns featured six teams on both the boys’ and girls’ sides during the two-day event, which ran March 18-19.
The boys’ rink won its opening draw 8-2 over Nip-Rock but then fell 6-1 to Westgate (Thunder Bay) that afternoon.
The girls also split their opening games, downing Marathon 7-3 but then losing 8-5 to St. Ignatius (Thunder Bay).
But while the boys rebounded Tuesday night with an 8-6 win over Geraldton to improve to 2-1, the girls fell to 1-2 with a 8-7 setback to the host rink.
When play resumed Wednesday morning, both Muskie rinks still were in position to make a run for an OFSAA berth.
The seventh draw saw the Muskie boys inch closer to the top of the standings when they took down Queen Elizabeth by a 6-5 margin.
In the final draw of the NWOSSAA tournament, Westgate punched their ticket to Peterborough in the boys’ division with a 6-5 win over Geraldton.
While the Muskie boys also won their final draw (a 7-4 victory over St. Patrick’s), the Fort High crew (4-1) could not match Westgate’s undefeated record (5-0).
“We played really well in the tournament,” said boys’ head coach Tom Fry. “[Westgate] was our only loss throughout the whole season. . . .
“We had one bad end that hurt us against a team that went undefeated and we didn’t get another crack at them.”
The Muskie girls, meanwhile, were unable to string together a pair of wins on Wednesday.
Hillcrest defeated Fort High 6-4 margin in the morning draw to eliminate them, though the black-and-gold ended the NWOSSAA playdowns on a high note with a 9-8 win over Beaver Brae (Kenora) to finish in fourth place at 2-3.
St. Ignatius finished in top spot with a perfect 5-0 record, but since the girls’ division could send two teams to OFSAA, a tie-breaker was needed between Hillcrest and host Geraldton (both 3-2) to determine the runner-up.
With a provincial bid on the line, the Hillcrest rink stepped up and earned a 6-5 win.
Fry looked at the tournament as a great success for his players. “We had anticipated going that far, and had planned to go further,” he noted.
“But curling can be a fickle game,” Fry added. “One missed rock can mean a single point or it can mean a three-point end like we had [against Westgate].”
Looking forward, the Muskie boys’ rink will undergo some serious changes in the off-season. “We are losing our [back] end,” said Fry. “Our third and our skip are moving on.”
Still, Fry is confident in the players who are coming up to Muskie level next year.
“We have some really good talent coming up from the Bantam division,” he remarked. “We’ll be a little green at the third and skip positions, but I’m excited by what we’ll have to work with.”