Staff
It’s not how you finish, it’s how you start.
A reversal of that time-worn saying applied most accurately to Fort Frances skip Chris Silver and his rink at the Northern Ontario junior curling championships in Sault Ste. Marie this past week.
Silver and his team of third Reece Jones, second Kurt McGuire, and lead Matthew Nowak finished in fifth place—and out of the three-team playoff round—with a 3-4 record.
It was a tale of two events for the local rink, which still is eligible for Bantam competition but stepped up a class after qualifying out of the Region 1 playdowns last month.
Silver lost his first four games before rebounding to win the last three, although the effort proved too little, too late to keep them in playoff contention.
Silver didn’t catch any breaks from the schedule-maker right off the bat, drawing Zach Warkentin (Thunder Bay), who earned an 8-2 win in eight ends in what proved to be his launching pad to a first-place finish in the round-robin with a 7-0 record.
Warkentin built a 4-0 lead after four ends, following a second-end single with back-to-back steals of two and then one in the third and fourth ends.
Silver stirred to life in the fifth with a single, then stole one in the sixth to make it 4-2. But his comeback derailed when Warkentin struck for three in the seventh and then stole one more in the eighth.
Life didn’t get any easier for the Fort rink in their second game Saturday as Brendan Acorn (Sudbury) grabbed four in the second to propel his rink to an 11-1 victory in just seven ends.
Silver’s only point came in the third.
The Fort rink hoped for better luck Sunday but instead watched its games get even shorter thanks to a 10-3 shellacking from hometown favourite Chris Glibota that took only six ends.
The six-end theme continued later Sunday against defending provincial champ Tanner Horgan (Sudbury), who cruised to a 7-2 win.
With a playoff berth not even a pipe dream at this point, the Silver rink seemed to relax and started delivering more quality shots the rest of the way.
They finally got into the win column in their third game Sunday, upending fellow Region 1 rep Jaron Hoppe (Sioux Lookout) by a 7-5 count.
With a renewed vigour in their systems, the local curlers came out Monday and steamrolled to a 9-0 win over Sam Cull (Sudbury) in five ends.
Silver never had nor needed the hammer the entire game—stealing all nine points with two in the first, three in the second, singles in the third and fourth, and a clinching pair in the fifth.
Then in his finale against Cull’s brother, Max, Silver was in the unfamiliar position of having a huge lead at the halfway mark after his deuce in the fourth and a massive steal of five in the fifth had him up 8-1.
But Max Cull proceeded to take Silver to the max, as a pair in the sixth was followed by three-consecutive steals of one.
Silver’s rink kept its composure, though, and got the job done by running Cull out of rocks in the 10th for an 8-6 triumph.
Horgan took down Acorn 9-7 in an extra end in yesterday’s semi-final to book a date with Warkentin in yesterday’s title game (the contest was incomplete as of press time).
The winner advances to the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors from Jan. 24-Feb. 1 in Corner Brook, N.L.
