Einarson clinches top spot at Scotties, will face Jones in 1-vs-2 playoff

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This article was published 03/02/2018 (3127 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PENTICTON, B.C. — Kerri Einarson always believed she could get here. She never doubted. Not when she lost two consecutive provincial finals, not when she was bounced in a tiebreaker at another: no doubt, not once, not ever.

She knew she had the shots. She believed she had the team, in her East St. Paul rink of third Selena Kaatz, second Liz Fyfe and lead Kristin MacCuish. More than anything else, she knew she had that drive, and that competitive fire.

Look where it’s carried her now: to the brink of the 2018 Scotties championship final.

On Friday night, Einarson clinched top spot in the championship round’s final standings, sealing the deal with a 6-4 win over Alberta’s Casey Scheidegger. That fixed her record at 9-2, with wins over other top teams in her pocket.

“We know what we can do, and we proved it before,” Einarson said, moments after shaking on the pivotal win. “So to be where we are right now is pretty awesome.”

Even better for Manitoba fans: she’ll meet Jennifer Jones (9-2) in the Saturday night 1-vs-2 Page playoff game. One way or another, there will be at least one Manitoba-based team in the final — perhaps even an all-Manitoba battle.

The 3-vs-4 game will be contested between Northern Ontario’s Tracy Fleury (8-3) and Nova Scotia’s Mary-Anne Arsenault (9-2). It was a heartbreaker finish for second seed Scheidegger (7-4), who came here with high hopes.

Now, Einarson has to shake off the intensity of the playoff race, and focus on the challenge ahead.

She came into this week without a guaranteed place, having to beat former Manitoba rival Chelsea Carey (who, by the way, dealt her one of those provincial heartbreakers in 2014) just to seize the last wild card berth on the field.

Now, she’s gunning to take it all. She’s sure playing well enough: she shot a fine 89 per cent Friday night.

But the 1-vs-2 will be a challenge. Famously, it took Einarson 18 tries against Jones to get her first win, a milestone she achieved here, during the round robin. Now, she’ll have to beat Jones at least one more time. Maybe twice.

And Jones, well, she has been locked and loaded since that loss to Einarson earlier in the week.

Jones completed an explosive finish on Friday night, with a 10-4 win over Michelle Englot’s Team Canada. The Manitoba champion skip shot 92 per cent in that match, and locked it down early to secure her playoff berth.

Englot is, so often, a poet with draw weight, but it was a draw that ended her hopes in this game.

In the fourth, Jones’ rocks peppered the rings. Still, Englot just needed an open draw to the four-foot for a single; but despite front end Raunora Westcott and Leslie Wilson’s best efforts, her rock stopped before it even hit the house.

That was a steal of three for Manitoba, and a 4-0 lead. Canada never came back; Jones zoomed away.

Englot, the other Manitoba playoff contender, fell out of playoff contention with a 6-5 record. She’d fought to keep their hopes alive with an 8-5 afternoon win over Einarson, but the evening meeting with Jones proved too much.

With that, after eight Saskatchewan championships, one buffalo jacket, and a surprise Team Canada maple leaf, Englot has taken her last slide down Scotties ice. The 54-year-old skip plans to retire after this season is done.

Oh, but what a run she had, to close it down.

Together, the team of Englot, vice Kate Cameron, second Leslie Wilson and lead Raunora Westcott blazed to the 2017 Scotties final — one of the most thrilling in memory — played the Olympic trials, and became Team Canada.

To think, it all started with a phone call back in spring of 2016. The team’s former skip Kristy McDonald retired, and left the other three hunting for a fourth to lead them into a bonspiel in Korea; the rest, as they say, is history.

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“It’s been such a ride,” Englot said, all smiles after the final Scotties game of her career. “It’s been an incredible two years, and the best decision of my life was to play with them. It was great to end my career this way.”

It’s too early to say what the future will hold for Cameron, Wilson and Westcott. But for Cameron, who was a hard-hitting skip before joining McDonald (then Englot) at third, the last two years have definitely shaped her game.

“They both taught me so much about the game, and different aspects of the game,” Cameron said. “Michelle has taught me patience, and when to go forward and when not to, and how to relax a little bit out there.”

Playoffs kick off Saturday, with a 4 p.m. CST 3-vs-4 game. The 1-vs-2 will begin at 9 p.m. CST on Saturday night. The winner will get a berth into Sunday evening’s final; the loser will drop into Sunday morning’s semfinal game.

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.