Einarson rink comes up short

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This article was published 15/02/2019 (2651 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SYDNEY, N.S. — When Kerri Einarson came to the Scotties last year, she arrived with one desperate chance to fight her way onto the draw. She made it that time, and the wild-card jacket was good to her. She wore it all the way to the national final, and almost won it all.

This week, the Gimli-based skip had a chance to repeat that feat. After falling to Tracy Fleury in the Manitoba final last month, she knew she’d get another shot to compete for a maple leaf: all she had to do was beat Alberta’s Casey Scheidegger in the 2019 Scotties Tournament of Hearts’ wild-card game.

She wanted to get back into the main national battle so badly. But when the Scotties round robin kicks off today, Einarson, third Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard and lead Brianne Meilleur won’t be there. Instead, they’ll be headed home, after skidding to a 7-6 loss to Scheidegger in the wild-card game.

“I struggled that whole entire game,” Einarson said, moments after the loss. “I feel like I let my team down.”

In the end, it was a tense match, though never an especially well-played one. Both teams spent most of the first half struggling to understand the lightning-fast ice. Rocks slid straighter than they expected, and misses followed each other. For awhile, it seemed like nothing was going right for either side.

Consider the second end. Einarson tried to draw into the house with her last shot, but the rock failed to sneak past the guard. That left Scheidegger a chance to draw for two, but her hammer groaned to a halt well short. It just felt as though neither team could take control.

“The first five ends were a bit of a struggle,” Scheidegger agreed, thronged by media after the win. “The ice was good, but maybe a little different than we’d seen in practice. Once we figured it out, it was good.”

She’s the one who figured it out first. The teams had gone into the fifth-end break tied 3-3. But in the sixth, Einarson’s hammer draw slid up light, giving up a steal of one and handing Scheidegger her first lead. She stole two more points in the seventh, this time when Einarson’s final draw slid too heavy.

But Einarson, who had curled a dismal 48 per cent through six ends, refused to go away easy. Down 6-3, she fought back with a crafty setup in the eighth end. In fact, that one was so well-played for Einarson that by the time there were just two rocks left to play, Einarson was lying four.

If Scheidegger had been anything less than perfect on her last shot, Einarson would have scored five and the whole game would suddenly be different.

But Scheidegger was perfect, sending a draw to nestle right on top of Einarson’s shot rock. That limited Einarson to a deuce, and Scheidegger hung onto a 6-5 lead.

After grabbing a ninth-end steal to tie the game up, Einarson played the 10th smart, feathering rocks to sit shot and replacing guards. In the end, Scheidegger did need to throw her last rock, a draw to the four-foot to score one. She made it, and with that, Team Einarson’s hopes were done.

Now, they’ll sit back while the rest of the top teams in Canada continue the battle for the maple leaf. A year seems like a long time, when you spend most of it fighting to get to the place you’ve just left behind. But there are bigger things in life than this, the skip knows, and she’ll be fine.

“It sucks,” Einarson said. “We wanted to stay here all week. But I get to go home to two beautiful girls.”

For Scheidegger, the victory capped off what has already been a whirlwind journey. Her team endured a 36-hour travel nightmare just to get to the Scotties, starting when bad weather cancelled their flight out of Lethbridge, and continuing through to hopping on a bus in Halifax for the four-hour drive to Sydney.

Now, Scheidegger and her team of third Cary-Anne McTaggart, second Jessie Haughian and lead Kristie Moore won’t even get a chance to catch their breath. They’ll have to get right back to work in tonight’s evening draw, where they’ll open their round robin against Yukon’s Nicole Baldwin.

As for their bright-orange Team Wild Card jerseys? It’s not the Alberta colours they’re used to, but they’re happy to take ’em.

“At one point, Kristie was smiling and I could see the reflection of the jacket in her teeth,” Scheidegger said. “I was like ‘wow, these are really bright.’”

Even without Einarson, there will be lots of Manitoba action to follow when the round robin kicks. The buffalo gals on Team Fleury are up first in the 12:30 p.m. draw; they’ll go toe to toe with a familiar foe in Alberta’s Chelsea Carey, another former Manitoba champ.

Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones, meanwhile, will open her quest for a record-setting seventh Canadian championship in the 5:30 p.m. draw. The defending Scotties champ’s opponent for that one will be sixth seed Robyn Silvernagle of Saskatchewan, in her first Scotties. Jones, by the way, is just five wins away from tying the Scotties’ record.

The 2019 Scotties Tournament of Hearts runs through Feb. 24.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca