Michelle Englot wins provincial championship

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This article was published 29/01/2017 (3366 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The buffalo hunt lured Michelle Englot out of Saskatchewan, but when she nabbed it, she couldn’t believe it. 

Instead, in the moments after she defeated Darcy Robertson to claim the 2017 Manitoba women’s curling championship, Englot greeted the media, still trembling, still beaming after an electric finish to an 8-6 win.

“It’s kind of surreal so far,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ve won yet. I think once we’ve had a chance to let it sink in… it’s definitely a great feeling, for sure. Especially with a field such as the teams that were here.”

For the rest of her team, the win felt as if something had come full circle. One year ago, third Kate Cameron, second Leslie Wilson and lead Raunora Westcott met heartbreak in the Manitoba final, then with skip Kristy McDonald.

Shortly after that loss, McDonald opted to step back from competitive play, but Cameron, Wilson and Westcott believed they had something special in their Granite Curling Club group; so they went on the hunt for a new skip.

Englot seemed an obvious choice. Though she was based in Regina and would have to drive in to practice, she was a savvy skip, a seven-time Saskatchewan champion. And they knew she would match their work ethic, completely.

“We wanted somebody with experience, somebody with success, and she brought both,” Westcott said. “It was a good choice.”

At first, the newly-minted Team Englot thought 2016-17 might be a building year; that was OK, they figured. They were focused more on the Olympic trials. But they had a successful season; and this week, Team Englot caught fire.

The Manitoba Scotties was a roller coaster, with what some observers called one of the deepest fields they’d seen in years. It was led by the two most recent Manitoba champions in Jennifer Jones and her heir apparent, Kerri Einarson.

Then, as the round robin rolled forward, a quartet of 20-something skips became the big story. Brianne Meilleur, Shannon Birchard, Beth Peterson and Christine MacKay all jostled for a shot at the playoffs; Birchard broke through.

Against that competition, it was sort of poetic that it came down to this: two seasoned skips, both in their 50s, holding their team steady all the way to the top. Englot won her first provincial title in 1988; Robertson, two years before.

When they met on the ice at Eric Coy Arena, it was a classic. In contrast to the morning semifinal between Robertson and Jones, which was swamped by mistakes, the final match-up was — for the most part — crisper, more tight.

It also came down to the wire. For nine ends, the teams picked away at each other: Englot opened with a single and a steal of one, Robertson responded with a third-end deuce, Englot replied with a deuce of her own in the fourth.

But in the 10th, with the score tied at 6-6 and Englot holding the hammer, Robertson loaded up in hopes of a steal. Helping her case was an electrifying shot by third Karen Klein, who threw a red-hot runback to sit one.

Then, the kicker: Cameron took the hack, pushed off, and fired a near-identical shot. It was perfect, driving out the Robertson shot rock to sit two. The crowd at Eric Coy Arena exploded, and on the sidelines, Englot was euphoric.

“Wasn’t that incredible?” she said. “When they made the runback, we basically had one chance to get it off with Kate’s. She made an incredible shot, and a perfect roll, so that set us up… it was a pretty intense 10th end.”

As lead Westcott watched Cameron’s shot blaze to its target, a wave of confidence surged up inside her.

“Darcy and her team were making a ton of big shots when they had to,” the lead said, of that tense final sequence. “We were still on pins and needles. But when (Kate) made that shot, I knew we had the game.”

There was no question in Englot’s mind that she’d ask Cameron to make that tricky shot; those kinds of heaters are Cameron’s “bread and butter,” the skip said. Cameron never had any doubt she would make it; she just had to.

“It was pretty much make or miss, and we’re probably going to lose at that point,” Cameron said. “We threw a ton of shots on that exact inturn, and my inturn runback is probably my favourite shot. So I knew what I had to do.”

With the battle of the thirds out of the way, Robertson had only a slim chance to recover. Her first shot was, perhaps, almost too precise: it sliced through a narrow port, but straightened and flew out the other side of the house.

Her second shot came up short, and with that, Englot was the new Manitoba champion.

“It was a great game,” Robertson said, still smiling after the loss. “The draw weight was a struggle for everybody, but both teams fought hard… my team played great all week, we had a great run, and that’s all you can do.”

Now, the newly minted Manitoba champions will rest up and prepare for the 2017 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which kicks off Feb. 16 in St. Catharine’s, Ont.

For Westcott, who played with former skip Kristy McDonald off and on since they were juniors, there may be a bittersweet touch at making it out of Manitoba without her longtime friend. They’d come so close to it in 2016. 

“We won lots of games together, never a Scotties, so it’s hard to not see her here with us,” Westcott said. “But she’ll be excited for us too. She’s always on our side, and in our thoughts.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca