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This article was published 24/01/2019 (2789 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GIMLI — There were a few moments, late in the Thursday afternoon game, that got Darcy Robertson’s heart pumping. It was the second day of play at the 2019 Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts, and a big upset was brewing: with seven ends behind them, Robertson, the third seed, was trailing Brandon’s Alyssa Calvert 8-4.

With an unbeaten record on the line, Robertson stayed calm. Experience breeds patience, and Robertson has more of both than most. She won the first of her three Manitoba championships in 1986, years before Calvert was even born; she’s played 175 games at provincials, more than any other curler — and won more of them, too.

So now, on the second day of her 24th appearance at a women’s provincial championship, Robertson settled in to make shots. Inch by inch, her team started to claw their way back up: a three-ender in the eighth closed the gap. A ninth-end stolen point tied the game at 8-8, and then in the final end, Robertson pushed Calvert to the last shot.

The comeback bid worked. Calvert’s hammer draw slid a little too far; Robertson took the winning steal of one and escaped with her unbeaten streak intact at three games. (In the evening draw, Roberston routed Terry Ursel 15-8 to improve to 4-0.)

“It was a tough game,” Robertson said, chatting moments after the comeback against Calvert was complete. “We had to battle back and grind it out. It was just nice to get that win. You know what, sometimes you gotta make the shots when you need to. It’s a good practice for the end of the week… We’ve got a lot more hard games (ahead).”

She paused for a moment. “Every game is tough out here, though.”

Her opponents would agree. In recent years, Robertson’s team of third Karen Klein, second Vanessa Foster and lead Theresa Cannon has been one of the toughest to beat. They made back-to-back finals in 2017 and ’18, knocking Jennifer Jones out of contention in the first of those years and hotshot Kerri Einarson out in both.

Yet each year, Team Robertson flies just below the radar, seeded highly but somehow not subject to the dramatic spotlights that swarm other top players. Maybe it’s because after more than three decades on provincial ice, Robertson is too much of an institution at this tournament, her presence too comfortably familiar.

That’s fine with her team, though. They’re happy to be underrated, freed from the weight of outside expectations.

“You don’t feel like there’s as much pressure on you,” Foster said. “If you go out there and end up losing a game that maybe in theory you shouldn’t have lost, then people aren’t asking us all the time, ‘How come you lost that game? What happened?’ It’s nice to go out there and focus on us.”

Yet the portrait of Robertson, seasoned veteran and perennial Scotties fixture, doesn’t quite tell the story. Because over the last few years, something remarkable has been happening: quietly, almost without the media noticing, Robertson has been having one of the best seasons of her curling career.

This season, they won a couple of key bonspiels. The ranking points they earned launched them into the elite televised grand slams. They made the quarter-finals at the elite Masters in Nova Scotia, and again at the Tour Challenge a couple of weeks later; no easy feat, in a field of high-powered teams.

“You always aspire to think that maybe one day you’ll get a chance to play in these events, and this year we got to play in all of them,” Foster said. “So it’s been a dream season for us, and we’ve been trying to embrace the moment, and we’ve had some success, and that makes it all better.”

It’s a stunning achievement, especially given the length of Robertson’s career. Elite curling is more demanding now than it was when she was younger; even then, there was a time when she had to step away from the game for nearly a decade, to focus on raising her four children.

“I never even thought about curling, because there was no time,” Robertson said with a laugh. “But I got back into it slowly. When my youngest daughter finished Grade 12, I had more time. They’re all in university now, and done all their school sports… so I felt I had a little more free time to try this curling thing again.”

About four years ago, Robertson and her team decided to take a run at breaking into curling’s elite ranks. The hard work paid off; their success of recent years speaks for itself. And it’s made them a contender here in Gimli, where Robertson is a clear challenger to second-seed Tracy Fleury in their round-robin group.

The two will face each other at 4 p.m. today, a game that could decide which will move into the 1-versus-2 Page playoff game. This much is certain: the members of Team Fleury, three of which played on that Einarson team that suffered the last two years of defeat at Robertson’s hands, know to be careful.

“It’s always a good game against her,” Fleury third Selena Njegovan said. “They work super hard. We see them all the time at the club practising, so they’ve worked really hard and they deserve to be where they are.”

Whatever happens this weekend, that journey isn’t over. In fact, more than three decades into her career, it somehow feels as if Robertson is just getting started. The back-to-back provincial finals, the elite competition, the bonspiel victories — all of it tells a story of a skip who is finding her stride in her renaissance years.

“You always appreciate the success,” Robertson said. “I loved curling from when I was young, and I just really like playing the game… it’s fun for me to play at this level, and I really enjoy being at this time in my career that I can still do it, and that I have time now to sacrifice for this curling.”

The 2019 Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts continues through Sunday at the Gimli Recreation Centre. The semifinal and final will be televised live on Sportsnet. For a full schedule and live scores, check out curlmanitoba.org.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca