No fourth member? No problem

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This article was published 06/01/2019 (2645 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Meghan Walter and her Elmwood teammates Mackenzie Elias and Morgan Reimer aren’t opposed to extra work.

The curling trio proved the point through the opening four days at the Canola Junior Championship where they ran the table during the women’s round robin, going 7-0 and outscoring their opponents a combined 62-29 while playing one team member short since the mid-season departure of their third.

This morning, the 16-year-old skip will take on St. Vital’s Shae Bevan in the 1 vs. 2 Page playoff game at the Heather Curling Club. The same skips also faced off in last year’s provincial final, won by Bevan.

Walter was quick to credit Elias, an 18-year-old lead, and Reimer, an 18-year-old second, for the squad’s impressive performance at provincials. Finding a suitable replacement at third midway through the season proved to be too difficult, so the Walters team forged ahead.

“They both throw three (rocks) and I throw my two, and as much as we can, Morgan and I like to get out and help Mackenzie sweep,” Walters said following Sunday morning’s 7-3 win over Hayley Bergman of Morris. “She’s had a lot of pressure on her this weekend and she’s pretty tired. We try to give her as much help as we can.

“Usually I run down the sheet halfway and whoever’s throwing can call the line and and go from there. It’s been working out for us and we know we we have to do it. It’s just part of the game for us.”

Walter has been on a roll lately. Two months ago, she was the third on the Manitoba team that captured a national mixed title with skip Colin Kurz, second Brendan Bilawka and lead Sara Oliver.

Today, third-seeded Walter will face No. 4 Bevan (6-1) in 1 vs. 2 game at 8:30 a.m. while unseeded Bergman (6-1) takes on top-seeded Mackenzie Zacharias (6-1) of Elmwood in the 3 vs. 4 game. Semifinals are scheduled for 12:15 p.m. today with finals set to follow at 4 p.m.

“I don’t think it’s really any disappointment,” said Zacharias, who beat Assiniboine Memorial’s Alex Friesen 7-6 in the final round-robin game to avoid a tiebreaker, thereby finishing fourth. “It’s a long week and there are a lot of games, so the goal is always just to get to playoffs. To get to playoffs is a pretty big accomplishment for our province. So, I think, just to get to playoffs was our goal, and we can take it from here and ride out the playoffs.”

Walter’s 18-year-old brother Brett, skipping an unseeded team out of Elmwood, also earned a spot in today’s playoffs.

Brett Walters — joined by third Terron Stykalo, second Lawson Yates and lead Liam Tod — rolled to a 6-1 round-robin record and earned a spot in the men’s 1 vs. 2 game against two-time defending champ J.T. Ryan of Assiniboine Memorial.

St. Vital’s No. 2-seeded Ryan Wiebe (6-1) claimed third place and will face fifth seed Jordan McDonald of St. Vital in the 3 vs. 4 game. McDonald emerged from a three-way tiebreaker Sunday night, beating Brandon’s Brayden Payette 9-3 to advance. Payette reached the second tiebreaker after defeating Charleswood’s Zachary Wasylik 10-5 in an earlier tiebreaker. All three teams finished the round robin at 5-2.

McDonald, who had a superior draw-to-the-button mark in the tiebreaking formula, will face the winner of a 4 p.m. showdown between Wasylik and Payette at 7:45 p.m.

It will be the fourth consecutive appearance in the 1 vs. 2 game at the provincial championship for Ryan and third Jacques Gauthier, who have lost only one round-robin game in the past three years at the event.

Ryan is confident in his battle-tested team, armed with the experience of having played in the pressure-cooker of previous playoff rounds.

“I think it’s an edge for sure and we’ll take anything we can get at this stage,” Ryan said. “It’s nice to know when you get later in a game, none of us will get too nervous because we’ve been there before. There’s always going to be a little bit of nerves because they are big games now, but I think we know how to handle it pretty well.”

Gauthier said keeping a level head is essential.

“The biggest thing going in is… we know that if lose it we’re not out of it when a lot of times, teams get on a roll and if they get stopped in the (1 vs. 2 game) it’s tough for them to regroup,” Gauthier said. “I think, whether we win or lose, we know we’re two wins away from winning again.

“I think for them, if they lose, it’s tough to rebound. Like our first year, it was the same thing — we lost to (Matt) Dunstone and we were kicking ourselves, and in the semifinal, we just didn’t play well. It rattled us because we weren’t as experienced.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @sawa14