Top seeds Einarson, Spencer suffer upset losses on opening day at provincial Scotties

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/01/2016 (3785 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BEAUSEJOUR — Before this Manitoba women’s curling championship even started, the advance buzz promised a wide-open contest where anything could happen.

Still, few would have predicted that surprises would strike as early as the second draw of the week, with opening losses by two of the top seeds.

Yet that’s exactly what happened Wednesday morning at Beausejour’s Sun Gro Centre, as two-time provincial finalist Kerri Einarson fell to Cheryl Reed, and seasoned former Manitoba champion Barb Spencer lost to Dauphin’s Lisa Menard. Both results were stunning, with Einarson ranked as second seed and Spencer right behind her.

Suddenly, the round robin at the 2016 Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts looked a little bit tighter, with even more questions yet to be decided.

Look, even Reed wasn’t banking on herself to win, when she pulled off a wild 11-10 extra end victory over Einarson. The 30-year-old skip, who lives in Selkirk but leads a team out of Brandon, is fresh off a few years away from curling. She just assembled her foursome this season.

“It’s unexpected,” Reed said after the roller coaster was over. “We played really well, so I’m really proud of the girls. It was a little heart-pounding, but it was great to get out with a win, and it’s always nice to know that you beat someone you weren’t expected to… it kind of shows us that we do deserve to be here.”

No doubt, Menard can relate. This is the Dauphin skip’s fourth provincials, but her first with a brand-new team. The rest of her rink lives in Winnipeg so they rarely get to practise.

They weren’t sure what to expect in Beausejour, Menard said — she’d finished 1-6 in her previous provincial round robins.

This time, she got to kick off her campaign with a gutsy 9-7 win over Spencer, collecting a trio of three-enders to hopscotch her way to the win.

In a way, the dual upsets — dealt on neighbouring sheets — set the tone for the day, making it even more evident this Scotties could pack a ton of surprises. Einarson’s morning match was, incredibly enough, her first round-robin loss at provincials after two straight years of 7-0 records.

Afterwards, the skip affirmed that her team, which includes third Selena Kaatz, second Liz Fyfe and lead Kristin MacCuish, wouldn’t let it shake them.

“There’s lots of games left — I’m not worried,” Einarson said. “As long as we get our draw weight and start getting our key shots, we should be fine… We’ve went through this thing undefeated twice, and I’m not worried at all. We just gotta come out and focus on what we want, and that we need to win.”

Still, starting out with a loss certainly amps up the pressure. The two top finishers in each round-robin group qualify for the playoffs. In the Asham Group, headed by top seed Kristy McDonald and fourth-ranked Michelle Montford, the gap between the top two and the rest of the pack is a bit larger.

But the Extreme Force group that Einarson and Spencer sit atop has looked competitive from the start.

Winnipeg Free Press | Newsletter

Mike McIntyre | On Sports

Thursdays

Keep up to date on sports with Mike McIntyre's weekly newsletter.

Sign up for Mike McIntyre | On Sports

Sign Up

I agree to the Terms and Conditions, Cookie and Privacy Policies, and CASL agreement.

Those two are the clear favourites to move on, but they always stood to face challenges from fifth-ranked Darcy Robertson or Cathy Overton-Clapham, who is skipping a young team but ought not be counted out.

Now, that race seems a little bit more urgent. The early upsets could mean that Einarson and Spencer’s Friday afternoon match may have even more dramatic playoff implications. But there’s a whole lot of curling left, and that’s looking too far in the distance.

What is certain is that these Scotties are, as promised, turning out to be anything but expected.

“You’re going to have one of those kind of games during the week,” Spencer said. “Hopefully, we got rid of it early, and hopefully we come with our backs against the wall a little bit and start playing like we can.”

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.