Carey comeback claims Scotties

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This article was published 25/02/2019 (2615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SYDNEY, N.S. — Even five minutes after the last rock stopped, Chelsea Carey didn’t quite know what hit her.

There was no way to comprehend what had just happened, that she had stolen two consecutive ends on Rachel Homan, and that she was, for the second time in her life, the Canadian women’s curling champion.

But that’s exactly what happened. First in the 10th end, and then again in the extra, Carey put rocks where she needed. Both times Homan had a draw to win the game. And both times, sweep as hard as teammates Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle might, the rock stopped short.

The final score: an 8-6 victory for Carey and her Alberta championship team of Sarah Wilkes, Dana Ferguson and Rachel Brown. A comeback win that wasn’t pretty, but was as tenacious as it needed to be to get the job done. And a jam-packed arena crowd of 3,400 that was stunned speechless — just like the victor herself.

“I’m still in shock,” Carey said, moments after the win. “We wanted to make her throw that draw, because that path is pretty slow. We said that at the start of the end, and managed to do it, but I still expected her to make it. So it hasn’t hit me yet, for sure, but I’m sure I’ll be very excited when it does.”

Coming into the night, fans expected the best game of the Scotties. Homan had come the long way to reach the final, marching through Northern Ontario in the 3-vs.-4 game and then dropping Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle the semifinal; Carey had battled into the top spot through being the strongest round-robin contender.

In the most memorable of their recent meetings, the 2017 Olympic trial final, it had gone down to the wire. Homan won then, but only barely, clinching her ticket to Pyeongchang 6-5 when a Carey double takeout attempt couldn’t quite complete its mission. So there was some history there.

At first, Sunday night was a mess for Carey, a longtime force on the Manitoba scene. Homan seized the game hard and early; on the other hand, Alberta spent the first half struggling to string shots together. In the first end, Carey’s last shot wrecked on a guard; that handed Homan a steal of one for the early 1-0 lead, a wobbly start.

Ontario would steal again in the second; Carey got stuck with a single in the third. In the fourth, holding hammer for the first time in the game, Homan dropped three in the house to jump into a 5-1 lead. Through five ends, Carey was curling a dismal 48 per cent, and her team little better; Homan was blasting shots at 90 per cent.

Which is why what happened in the next half was so unexpected.

“Who saw this coming?” Carey told the crowd, in the post-game ceremony. “I didn’t, at the fifth-end break.”

Through the second half, Alberta began to claw back, as the skipper made some critical shots. In the sixth end, she sent a silky draw buried in the four-foot to sit shot; Homan actually missed with the ensuing hammer, giving Alberta a steal of one. In the seventh, the exact same scenario repeated, tightening Homan’s lead to 5-4.

“We knew we needed some misses, so we just said, ‘let’s just put as much pressure on her as we can, if we don’t get misses, we’re not going to win,’” Carey said. “So we just kept lobbing them in there, and then once they start to miss you can feel it shift a bit. We were like ‘okay, we got a chance.’”

By that point, the Albertans were clearly sharpening their game, while Ontario was faltering. Two nice shots by Carey in the eighth limited Homan to a single; but with the hammer back in nine, the Alberta skip couldn’t capitalize on some Ontario mistakes. Her last draw failed, she got one, and trailed by one coming home.

‘I’m still in shock… Who saw this coming? I didn’t at the fifth-end break’– Chelsea Carey after her extra-end win

Homan doesn’t lose often, when she’s one up with hammer. This time, she did. With Carey sitting shot at the end of the 10th, Homan’s last rock stopped just inches short, bringing on a tie game and an extra end. Alberta played it out smart, lying two in the eight-foot and pushing Homan into one last draw.

Homan settled in the hack, and started to slide. She let the rock fly and it came up light, far too light. The crowd burst into a tangle of sound — gasps, shouts, wordless utterances of shock.

“I’m obviously disappointed, we wanted to win that one, and we just came up short,” a tight-lipped Homan said, after the loss. “We had control, and we had every opportunity to win… we just missed a few too many.”

For Carey, it’s been a long journey, a wild one, a rollercoaster. She talks about fate a lot, about trying your best and seeing whether the game wants your number to come up. There have been heartbreaks: not just the Olympic trials, last season, but she missed Scotties last year after falling in the wild card game, too.

Now, she will wear the maple leaf at next month’s world championship in Denmark. The first time Carey went to worlds, back in 2016, she failed to bring home a medal. She will get another crack at it now, along with her first-year teammates.

“I have no words,” Carey said. “To come back on a team that’s such good hitters and front-runners seems impossible when you’re down. They just hung in there with me, everyone was super positive and supportive, and we just grinded it out. We’ve grinded out this whole week, so it’s been great.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca