Fourth time the charm for Team Zacharias

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This article was published 07/01/2019 (2805 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In three previous tries, Mackenzie Zacharias’ march to a provincial junior women’s curling championship ended with bitter semifinal defeats.

On Monday, there would be no denying Zacharias and her Elmwood team as they surged to their first Manitoba title with an 8-2 win in eight ends over clubmate Meghan Walter in the provincial final at the Heather.

“We tried not to think about it all game but it feels pretty great,” said the 19-year-old skip, who hails from Altona. “It feels like a long time coming. We’ve been in that semifinal so many times and I guess the fourth time was the charm because it worked out today.”

Zacharias, joined by third Lauryn Kuzyk, second Emily Zacharias (the skip’s sister) and lead Caitlyn Labossiere, took the long route to the title, finishing the round robin ranked fourth with a 6-1 record before beating Hayley Bergman of Morris 11-6 in the 3 vs. 4 playoff game Monday morning and vanquishing defending provincial champ Shae Bevan of St. Vital 8-1 in a semifinal that went seven ends.

So why the reversal of fortune?

“Honestly, we’ve had great teams all the years that we’ve played and I think everything came together this week,” said Mackenzie Zacharias. “We played a little bit shaky in the round robin. I think that’s what actually motivated us to play great today and we got on a roll this morning and kept it going.”

Meanwhile, Walter’s only loss came in the final.

Her team, reduced to a trio following the mid-season departure of their third, also included second Morgan Reimer and lead Mackenzie Elias. Walter, 16, went 7-0 in the preliminary round before subduing Bevan 10-5 in the 1 vs. 2 Page playoff game to advance.

In the final, Walter gave up steals of one in the first, second, third, sixth, seven and eighth ends.

“It’s really tough, especially last year we lost Canada Games trials and Manitoba Games, so we were hoping to win this one but I guess it just wasn’t our day,” said Elias, whose team also lost to Bevan in the 2018 provincial final. “There’s not much you can do. Maybe next year…

“We had a rough start… unfortunately we weren’t able to outplay Zacharias because they played pretty well.”

Added Mackenzie Zacharias: “I didn’t expect to come out here and make a couple of those (big shots). Getting up early is great but you can’t expect in a 10-end game that you are going to be able to stay up, so we just had to stay focused and we did that.”

Elias admitted the additional sweeping while playing with three players wasn’t easy but her team handled the workload with aplomb — until the final.

“Yeah, I’m pretty tired,” said Elilas. “I mean, it’s hard, especially when you’re playing through the week you don’t think about it too much because you know what you’re playing for. And Meghan and Morgan helped me all the time.”

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Zacharias and her crew will represent Manitoba at the Canadian junior championship, scheduled for Jan. 19-27 in Prince Albert, Sask.

“If we can play like we did here I think we’ll come out with some wins and I think that’s all we can ask for,” she said.

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14