Lyburn makes early exit

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This article was published 06/02/2015 (4132 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — Granite’s William Lyburn took the fall after his team was the first high seed to crash and burn at the 2015 Safeway Championship.

Lyburn, the championship’s fourth seed, lost a pair of Thursday games, including a 7-6 extra end defeat at the hands of Evan Martin of East St. Paul at Westman Place.

It was the game that got away, as Lyburn had control 3-1 and had the hammer playing the sixth end.

“It’s disappointing,” Lyburn said after barely getting his one in the 10th end to tie the game. “We came back and played a pretty solid game through five ends and then the wheels just came off. I guess that’s curling.

“It’s pretty disappointing because we’re a good team. But in a day, you can’t just put yourself … you have to go and win on the ice. I myself, we as a team were underperforming this morning and then myself, I let the team down there in the last five ends and normally I don’t really miss those shots.

“And I did.”

Lyburn, who had been to the semifinal round in two of the previous three years, said changing ice conditions really bit him in his late-day game against Martin.

“The game we lost this morning (9-4 to Richard Muntain of Pinawa), we were just a little sluggish,” he said. “And this game, I was just kind of playing the scoreboard. We controlled it after five, were where we wanted to be and made some good shots and then I myself let a few get away on us.

“All the games it’s changing a little bit. We’ve been monitoring it but if you lose that little feeling, that touch, when it’s changing, I just struggled with it coming down the stretch there.”

Two other high seeds who were knocked on their heels after surprising Thursday morning losses rebounded later in the day to fight on, moving on in B-side games today.

No. 3 Reid Carruthers of West St. Paul bounced back to stomp Stonewall’s Andy Stewart 10-1 in seven ends, and No. 5 Sean Grassie of Deer Lodge rebounded to take out Grant Brown of Thompson 9-4 in nine ends. Both will need a pair of wins today, with no margin for error, to advance to the playoff rounds.

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“I would say times 10 (better),” Carruthers smiled late Thursday. “I was a little bit nervous.”

He had dropped a 6-4 game to Kelly Marnoch of Carberry earlier, missing a final shot that would have provided a victory.

“It was a bounce-back for us,” Carruthers said. “We had to let that one (the loss to Marnoch) go. For us, we had to regroup.”

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca