Lawes wins twice to squeeze into Scotties tie-breakers

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This article was published 23/02/2023 (1125 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KAMLOOPS — Kaitlyn Lawes isn’t done yet.

The Thursday night draw at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Kamloops had a ton at stake as five teams in Pool A were vying for the final two playoff spots in the group. Depending on who won and lost, there were 16 different scenarios at play.

Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson had already secured the top seed in the pool with a perfect 8-0 record at the Canadian women’s curling championships. As for the No. 2 and No. 3 seeds, two tiebreakers are needed to determine who claims them and advances to the championship round.

Four teams — Nova Scotia’s Christina Black, Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges, British Columbia’s Clancy Grandy, and Wild Card No. 1’s Lawes — finished at 5-3.

Winnipeg’s Lawes, who beat Prince Edward Island’s Suzanne Birth 10-6 to stay in the hunt, will play Black in a loser-goes-home game. The other tiebreaker features St-Georges, who lost to Black in the late draw, and Grandy, who knocked out Alberta’s Kayla Skrlik (4-4) last night.

“They’re still allowing us to keep playing so it feels good to still have a chance at it,” said Lawes.

“We knew we just had to stay focused on what our jobs were and see how it all unfolded… I’m just really proud of the team for just staying present and finishing off the round robin with two wins.”

The tiebreakers take place this morning at 10:30 A.M. CT with second place playing fifth place, and third place playing fourth place (seedings determined by head-to-head records). And the winners go into the Page playoff qualifying round later this afternoon. The highest-ranked winner of the tiebreakers will finish second in the pool and the lowest-ranked advancer will grab third.

Since Lawes lost to St-Georges and Grandy, she is the No. 5 seed in the tiebreak debacle. Black, who lost 6-5 to Lawes earlier in the week, is No. 2 since she beat both St-Georges and Grandy in round-robin action.

No matter what happens in the other game, if Lawes outlasts Black, she moves into the final six as Pool A’s third team.

The second- and third-ranked teams in each pool crossover to play Page playoff qualifying games in the afternoon, which means if Lawes wins, she’ll meet No. 2 from Pool B — former teammate Jennifer Jones of Team Manitoba (7-1). Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville grabbed first in Pool B at 7-1 due to beating Jones earlier in the week. Ontario’s Rachel Homan (6-3) finished in third.

The Page qualifier winners go on to play the Page playoff seeding games tonight against one of the top-ranked teams from the two pools. The winners of the Page playoff seeding contests make their way to Saturday’s Page 1v2 game and the losers battle it out in the Page 3v4.

The semifinal and final take place Sunday.

At the beginning of the event, organizers stated only one tiebreaker game per pool could happen. They didn’t see a situation where four teams would be tied, but since the unexpected transpired, they called an audible late Thursday and scheduled two.

Walter first Manitoba team to leave Scotties

And then there were three.

East St. Paul’s Meghan Walter and Wild Card No. 3 were the first Manitoba team to be knocked out of this year’s Scotties.

Walter, who turned 21 on Wednesday and is the youngest skip in the 18-team field, started Thursday with a convincing 9-2 win over Yukon’s Hailey Birnie (1-7). Walter wasn’t able to finish on a winning note as she lost 10-9 to Newfoundland and Labrador’s Stacie Curtis (2-6) in the afternoon to end the event at 3-5.

Walter finished in seventh place in Pool B.

“We had a bit of a rough go here, but you can’t be perfect in every competition you play in and this is one that we weren’t,” said Walter. “Going forward we’ll learn from our mistakes and keep going.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31