Lucas Punkari
While his win-loss record was better than it was a year ago, Tim Nordin of the Stratton Curling Club came away empty-handed for the second-straight year at the Northern Ontario men’s provincial curling championships last week.
After finishing with a 2-9 mark last year in Sudbury, Nordin escaped from the basement at this year’s provincials—held at the Fort William Curling Club in Thunder Bay—as his rink wound up the week with a 3-8 record for 10th place in the 12-team field.
Brad Jacobs (Sault Ste. Marie) captured his second-straight provincial title thanks to a dramatic 7-6 win over Joe Scharf (Fort William Curling Club) in Sunday’s final.
Nordin’s team, which included third Mitch Sequin, second Adam Bolen, and lead Travis Showalter, turned out to be Jacobs’ first victim as they were demolished 11-1 in just six ends during the opening day of action last Sunday (Feb. 6).
After giving up a steal of one in an extra end to lose to Jeff Currie (Port Arthur), followed by a 7-4 setback to Bryan Burgess (Fort William Curling Club) later Monday, Nordin bounced back with a pair of wins Tuesday over North Bay’s Dustin Montpellier (6-3) and Sudbury’s Robbie Gordon (6-5).
However, any momentum Nordin may have picked up from those two wins quickly came to a screeching halt as he fell 8-6 to Scharf on Wednesday morning before getting pummelled 7-1 in six ends to David MacInnes (Englehart) that afternoon.
With an 8-4 setback to Mike Assad (Fort William Curling Club) on Thursday morning ending any chance of him making the playoffs, Nordin played the role of spoiler that night as he defeated John Salo (Geraldton) 5-3.
That loss proved to be a costly one for Salo’s rink, which included Devlin native Mike Badiuk at lead (who had just returned from the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Junior Championships in Calgary to take part in the provincials), as they ended up with a 6-5 record for the week and just missed out on getting into a tie-breaker.
Nordin was looking to continue to play spoiler in his final two round-robin games Friday, but he ended up suffering two more setbacks—9-2 in eight ends to Mike Pozihun (Port Arthur) and 8-1 to Mike Jakubo (Copper Cliff) in five ends.
Jacobs will now represent Northern Ontario at next month’s Tim Hortons Brier in London, Ont., where he’ll be looking to improve on his third-place showing last year.
Action will get underway at the John Labatt Centre on Saturday, March 5.
