Einarson showing wild side

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This article was published 02/02/2018 (3041 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PENTICTON, B.C. — When Kerri Einarson made her Scotties Tournament of Hearts debut two years ago, the whole thing was a thrill. It was her first Canadian championship, and honestly, she was just happy to be there.

This time is different: the East St. Paul skip and first-ever Scotties wild-card winner didn’t come here for experience.

Sure, most of the 16 teams who started the week in Penticton hoped to be the last one standing. With the championship round underway, eight teams still have a chance to make those Maple-Leaf dreams happen.

But Einarson, vice Selena Kaatz, second Liz Fyfe and lead Kristin MacCuish are doing far more than dreaming. Throughout this week, they’ve been shooting — and surviving — the way they’ll need to in order to cross the finish line, too.

“I said that to the girls. We’re playing good enough to win this,” Einarson said Thursday afternoon.

Moments earlier, Einarson had sealed her seventh win of the week, a 7-5 comeback over Ontario’s Hollie Duncan. The game wasn’t notable for how it started: Einarson opened by giving up two steals of one, then taking a force.

But the team rallied, snagging a fourth-end deuce and a three-ender in eight to take a firm grip on the game.

“We came out a little flat,” she said. “I just gave the girls a bit of a pep talk: ‘come on girls, let’s pick it up, let’s get the energy we had last night (a win over Jennifer Jones).’ I think we did that, and we had a good last five (ends).”

So with three games left to play — including a late Thursday night tilt against British Columbia’s Kesa Van Osch — and seven wins already in her pocket, Einarson controls her fate.

That should please her freshly acquired admirers at the South Okanagan Events Centre. One cadre of fans has taken a shine to Team Einarson, and are now serving as an enthusiastic cheering section.

The fans even wrote the Scotties’ latest hit single: an ode to Team Wild Card, chanted to the tune of the Troggs’ rock ‘n’ roll classic. (The lyrics: “Wild cards / you make the crowds sing / you make every shot / groovy.”)

Meanwhile, with Einarson on fire, her game tonight against Alberta’s Casey Scheidegger is beginning to loom a whole lot bigger.

Scheidegger added her seventh win on Thursday afternoon, with a solid 8-4 decision over Northern Ontario’s Tracy Fleury.

Elsewhere around the rink Thursday, Jennifer Jones was back to form with a 10-3 win over British Columbia’s Van Osch. It was a much-needed recovery, after a disastrous performance against Einarson the night before.

The other Manitoba-based team in the mix, Michelle Englot’s Team Canada, dropped their first championship round game to Nova Scotia veteran Mary-Anne Arsenault, taking their third loss on the week.

Jones was set to play Ontario on Thursday night, while Englot went up against Northern Ontario.

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Pour one out for Newfoundland skip Stacie Curtis, who came into her fifth Scotties with high hopes.

The former Canadian junior champion surged to a 4-0 start this week, but struggled in her last few games and was eliminated after losing 11-8 to Ontario’s Hollie Duncan in a tiebreaker

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Kerry Galusha may be out of contention in Penticton, but hey, at least she’s got better places to go.

The veteran Northwest Territories skip will soon hop a plane for Pyeongchang, where she’ll get to cheer on her curling brother Kevin Koe as his Canadian men’s team challenges for Olympic gold. And yes, Galusha and the whole Koe clan are ecstatic.

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“My daughter was telling everyone the next day at school, ‘My Uncle Kevin’s going to the Olympics!’” Galusha said, chatting at the beginning of the week. “It’s so exciting.”

This could be one of Galusha’s last trips to a national tournament. The Yellowknife skip has been a Scotties fixture, with 15 appearances since 1998. Now, she’s thinking about retiring from competitive play.

Which isn’t to say she won’t be shaping the future of northern curling.

“I’d just like to focus on coaching my daughter,” Galusha said. “She’s eight years old and she loves it. So I’d like to develop a good team out of the north, because right now we don’t have many junior curlers… I tell her she’ll be the next Rachel Homan.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.