Lucas Punkari
It’s been a few days since his rink captured the silver medal at the OFSAA curling championship in Thunder Bay, but the realization of what he accomplished is just starting to sink in for skip Isaac Keffer.
“It’s pretty crazy, really, and we didn’t even expect to make it that far at all,” he remarked.
Keffer, joined by third Cody Heyens, second Ian Grant, lead Jordan Sokoliuk, and fifth Luke Esselink, settled for silver after a 5-2 loss to Tyler Sagan’s foursome from St. James (Guelph) in the gold-medal game Saturday afternoon at the Port Arthur Curling Club.
“It was a really close game right ’til the end really,” Keffer recalled.
“We might not have been playing our best, but the team we were up against were playing really, really well, so they would have been tough to beat no matter what,” he reasoned.
Locked in a 2-2 tie after the first four ends, the black-and-gold gave up a deuce in the sixth end, then a steal of one in the seventh end to seal their fate.
“In the seventh, they had four rocks lined up with one in the four-foot, one in the 12- foot, and then two perfect guards out front,” Keffer explained.
“I tried to get my third [Heyens] to blow stuff up, but he was only able to peel one away, so on my first shot I did the same thing and was able to peel the other guard away.
“Then on my last, I had to get around a guard to make a double take-out, but I was only able to get the one rock out of the rings and ended up giving up the steal,” he said.
Fort High’s road to the final was a fairly adventurous one—earning a quarter-final berth by finishing second in Pool ‘A’ with a 2-2 record.
“The two teams that we beat there [London Central and Ridgetown] were two of the best teams in the field,” Keffer noted.
“We were totally focused on wanting to win those games, and we were all really shooting really well also, which was obviously a big help,” he reasoned.
The Muskies thought they had missed out on making the quarter-finals after dropping a 10-4 decision to Malvern Collegiate Institute (Toronto) in their final round-robin game Friday morning, which left them in a tie with London Central for second place in Pool ‘A.’
“We were really worried after that game because we thought we were out of the running,” Keffer confessed.
But thanks to their win over London Central a day earlier, Keffer’s rink held the tie-breaker to advance, which they find out about just after getting off the ice against Malvern.
“My second [Grant] came down and told us that we were in, and we pretty much all started to go crazy after that, so it was a pretty amazing feeling,” Keffer said.
With his voice basically shot
after four round-robin games, Keffer led his squad into a quarter-final tilt against Brebeuf College (Toronto) on Friday night, which they won 6-2 after scoring three in the seventh end.
“We knew that end would determine the rest of the game,” Keffer remarked.
“We just didn’t let our guard down at all, and we were able to control things the rest of the game and got the win as a result of that.
That set up a semi-final clash Saturday morning with the host rink from St. Ignatius, which was skipped by a familiar foe to Keffer in Jordan Potter.
“We’ve faced them in the past, and it’s basically been a split right down the middle as to who’s won, so anybody could have won that game because that’s how good it was,” Keffer explained.
In the end, with the Muskies leading 4-2 in the eighth, it came down to Potter’s last shot.
“He had to hit one of our stones out and sit in the house for three points, but he ended up rolling out a tiny bit more than he wanted and just missed out on that,” Keffer said.
“Then there was a measurement between the two stones that were in the eight-foot to see if there was going to be an extra end or not, and we just beat them out by about an inch to get the win.”
While Keffer had joked before heading to OFSAA that his goal was to beat his sister, Tirzah’s, quarter-final showing at last year’s all-Ontarios, a silver-medal performance was beyond his wildest imagination.
“It’s just so amazing,” he enthused. “We never even thought about making it that far.
“And while we wanted to win, we were still proud just to be in the final game,” he added.
Along with the competition on the ice, another highlight for the Keffer rink was the chance to meet some of the top curling personalities from the Thunder Bay region, such as Krista McCarville, Rick Lang, and Al Hackner.
“That was really cool,” Keffer said. “The entire event was really well done, and both clubs [Port Arthur and Fort William] were really nice to play at.”
Although the season isn’t quite over yet for the Muskie rink (they’re now getting ready for the ‘A’ division playoffs at the Fort Frances Curling Club), Keffer already has set his sights on making it back to the all-Ontarios in 2012 when he returns for a fifth year of high school.
“It’ll be a little bit different next year as my third [Heyens’ will be going away to university,” Keffer noted.
“But I think with the showing of the two Muskies teams lately, along with the other northern schools at OFSAA, it should bode really well for not just myself but for future curlers here in the region,” he remarked.
