Young skip living her Scotties dream

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This article was published 17/02/2019 (2715 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SYDNEY, N.S. — There’s nothing quite like that first slide down Scotties ice. Curlers dream about it all their lives, wondering if they will ever get there, if they’ll ever hear the low buzz of the crowd or feel the glare of arena lights.

Now, imagine if those rookie jitters were rewarded with a stunning upset victory in your debut Scotties game.

That’s the dream British Columbia skip Sarah Wark lived on Saturday afternoon, when a stunning last-minute four-ender vaulted her to a 7-6 win over the home-province hero — and four-time Nova Scotia champion — Jill Brothers.

For Wark, who was born in Winnipeg and grew up in B.C., the experience was like a dream, she said. She’s curled since she was just six years old, so to finally make it to the national stage — yeah, it took her a few ends to get her emotions in check.

“Even just walking out there, it’s hard to escape the experience that’s happening around you, and focus on your delivery, and your throw and your slide,” she said, beaming after the win. “I was fighting it a little bit. But I was trying to remember, too, that I want to enjoy the experience… I need to find a happy medium.”

It helps that the rest of Team B.C. — third Kristen Pilote, second Carley Sandwith and lead Jen Rusnell — have all been to a Scotties once. The week can be a whirlwind, with fan events and other obligations wedged between games. So they’ve been helping their skip out with where to go, and what needs to be done next.

She’s not the only skip here to benefit from some voices of experience. Of the 16 skips here in Cape Breton, three are Scotties first-timers. Besides Wark, there is also Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle, who leads a team that includes veteran provincial skip Stefanie Lawton at third.

Then there is Quebec’s Gabrielle Lavoie, who at just 20 years old is the youngest skip in the field. To help guide the team, nine-time Quebec champ Marie-France Larouche is on the bench as an alternate, as well as veteran coach Daniel Charette, who recently coached in China.

Youthful Scotties delegates are becoming something of a new tradition for la belle province: last year, 18-year-old Émilia Gagné became the youngest skip ever to compete on national women’s ice. She went a respectable 3-4 through the round robin, a promising result for such a fresh-faced up’n’comer.

Lavoie’s path to the Scotties was much the same as Gagné’s. After finishing third in this year’s provincial junior field, the Quebec City team decided to try their hand at the women’s provincials. Due to a dearth of junior events in the region, Lavoie said, many young teams are eager to move up.

Of the two round-robin pools at Scotties, the one Wark and Lavoie find themselves in is arguably the toughest. This week, they’ll have to face hotshots Rachel Homan (Ontario), Chelsea Carey (Alberta) and Manitoba’s Tracy Fleury. But in a way, that’s not a bad place to be, for two rookie skips looking to soak up experience.

“For us to improve as a team, we have to start playing those teams,” Wark said. “We are still fairly new, and we keep getting better and better each year. To come out here and play against these teams of such high calibre, it’s going to give us really good experience, and hopefully we can build on that.”

As for Lavoie, she’ll be “nervous, of course” to face Homan, but she’s prepared some tricks to stay calm.

“We’ll try to stay focused, and just keep it in our mind that we’re not playing against Rachel Homan, but we’re playing against other stones,” Lavoie said. “And it will be exceptional to watch her too, even though we’re playing against her. We’ll learn a lot by playing against her and get a lot more experience.”

No matter where they finish in the standings, the memories they make here will last forever. Even the sport’s most accomplished curlers say there’s never another Scotties quite like one’s first. You never know when, or even if, you’ll return to national ice — and, knowing that, Wark is determined to savour it all.

“So far, it’s really blown my expectations out of the water,” Wark said, her eyes shining. “It is something I have dreamt of since I was a little girl. I watch it every year. I try and get there every year… to walk out in the stadium for the opening ceremonies today with my dad in the crowd was very special.”

With that, she unzipped the top of her jacket, to display the Scotties necklace given to every curler that gets here.

“I’m never going to take it off, ever,” she said. “It’s very special.”

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Coming into the Scotties, Jenine Bodner and her team believed that this time was going to be different. They could feel it. “The Little Nunavut That Could,” they called themselves — and in the very first draw of the week, they did it.

The Iqaluit foursome made history on Saturday afternoon, when they beat that young Quebec team 4-3 on a 10th end steal of one. It was the first time Nunavut had ever won a game on the main Scotties draw: last year the territory went 0-8. Before that, it never escaped the former pre-tournament qualifying round.

So in the moments after the win, the team of skip Bodner (who throws second rocks), fourth Jennifer Blaney, third Alison Griffin and lead Sadie Pinksen was jubilant. They posed for pictures on the ice with the territorial flag, as a bustling Scotties crowd rewarded them with warm applause.

“I knew we could do it, but to actually get it under our belts is another story,” Bodner said, mobbed by reporters after the historic win.

“I’m so excited that this happened and we want to keep the ball rolling.”

(Fun fact: Bodner also has a Manitoba connection. The 34-year-old skip was born in Winnipeg, and went to university in Brandon.)

It doesn’t sound like much, to win just one game, but the accomplishment has resonance. Of all the regions in the national race, Nunavut has the steepest hill to climb. The territory’s whole population is just four-fifths the size of Brandon. There are few venues to play in, and flights out can soar well past $2,000.

“We want to prove that we deserve to be here,” Bodner said. “We come from an entire territory where it has the population of some provinces’ curlers.

“This means so much for us to represent our territory and it means a whole other thing for us to be able to win for our territory and all the people cheering back home.”

That’s the other downside of coming all the way from Nunavut. Due to the cost of travel, a lot of the team’s friends and family couldn’t make it to Sydney this week. But the team felt that support from home all the same, Bodner said — and not just from the North, either.

“We know that our phones, our Facebooks, everywhere will be blowing up,” she said. “The support from across Canada for our territory is amazing. We’ve gotten shout-outs, and everyone’s been so friendly to us.”

● ● ●

Manitoban curling fans have twin hopes at these Scotties, and for them, Day 1 had both good and bad news.

First up was Manitoba champion Tracy Fleury. She fell in the first draw of the round robin, to Alberta’s Carey.

It was an entertaining opening tilt, tight right down to the last end.

The Manitobans lost the game on Fleury’s last throw, a hammer draw to the eight foot that didn’t make it. That gave Carey a winning steal of one for a 7-6 final.

“It’s how it goes sometimes,” third Selena Njegovan said. “It’s not the start we wanted, so we’ll just have to buckle down… We had some misses, we had some really good shots. We can for sure be sharper coming into tomorrow.”

The result even came as a surprise to Carey. After two “absolutely perfect” 10th-end ticks by Manitoba lead Kristin MacCuish to keep the house open, the Alberta skip figured there was slim chance to snag a game-winning steal.

“Tracy Fleury drawing to the side of the eight foot, you gotta like her chances,” Carey said.

“But there was one path on the sheet that was a lot slower, and I think she just got caught on it… tough break for them, but we’ll take any we can get.”

Manitoba has more difficult tests ahead: they’ll play Rachel Homan on Tuesday morning. But for now, the buffalo gals will have two chances on today to put a win on the board, with those games against British Columbia and Quebec.

Meanwhile, Jennifer Jones opened her quest to defend her Canadian title with a nail-biter 6-5 evening win over Saskatchewan’s Silvernagle.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca