Lawes perfect through round-robin

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This article was published 26/01/2024 (952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MORDEN — Kaitlyn Lawes will never forget the first time she earned a Buffalo jacket at the women’s level.

It was in 2012 when she was an up and coming 23-year-old playing third for Jennifer Jones. That year’s Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts took place in Portage la Prairie, and Jones squared off against Chelsea Carey in front of a record 2,000 fans in the final. With the game tied 5-5 in the 10th end, Jones hit an extremely difficult tapback to secure the victory.

Lawes would go on to win three more provincial crowns with the veteran skip (2013, 2015, and 2018).

“That was a lot of fun,” Lawes recalled. “I have lots of fond memories of that and getting to go to my first Scotties as Team Manitoba.”

The 35-year-old is hoping to recapture that magic this weekend at the Access Event Centre in Morden by winning the event for the first time as a skip. Lawes, third Selena Njegovan, second Jocelyn Peterman and lead Kristin MacCuish are the tournament’s No. 1 seed and showed why in the round robin with a perfect 5-0 record. Assiniboine’s Beth Peterson gave her a run in Friday morning’s draw but Lawes — who was outscoring opponents 50-12 heading into Friday night’s six-team championship round — came away with an 8-6 extra-end victory.

“I’m not really thinking of it as like the first one as a skip or anything. It’d just be the first one with this team and it’d be a great confidence booster,” said Lawes.

“It’d be really special to win it with this team. We’ve been working really hard, so it’d be really nice to see all that hard work come together at the right time.”

After cruising through their first four contests, Lawes was happy to be pushed to the brink by Peterson, the No. 4 seed.

“A game like that was huge. It’s really nice to have to make some shots under pressure, play that extra end, and see what the ice is doing in ends seven through 11 because we didn’t really have that in some of our earlier games,” said Lawes.

“I’m really happy that we had a close game and we knew it would be against Peterson. They always play great against us.”

The good news for Team Lawes is they’ll be in Calgary (Feb. 16-25) next month at the Canadian Scotties even if things go off the rails this weekend. As the fourth-ranked foursome in the Canadian Team Ranking System, they have one of the two wild-card spots to nationals in their back pocket if they need it.

MacCuish believes that allows them to feel more loose this week.

Despite their impressive ranking, they haven’t won an event this season. They made one final and it was in October in Niagara Falls, Ont., where they dropped the Grand Slam of Curling’s HearingLife Tour Challenge in a 7-4 loss to Jones.

They qualified for the 2023 nationals in Kamloops, B.C. as Wild Card no. 1 and lost a tiebreaker to Nova Scotia’s Christina Black to miss out on making it past the round robin-stage.

“I think that we can play a little lighter while still working on the things that we need to going into the Scotties as well. We’re just playing light and confident out there,” said MacCuish. “It’s always important to us to represent Manitoba at the Scotties and I think wearing that Buffalo is really important. We’ve had a bit of an inconsistent year so winning this one will give us the confidence going into the Scotties that we need.”

The championship round is a crossover – the top three in Pool A play the top three in Pool B — to determine which three teams advance to the playoffs. The No. 2 will play No. 3 in Sunday morning’s semifinals with the winner advancing to play the top seed in the final at 2 p.m. Lawes, Peterson (3-2), and East St. Paul’s Kristy Watling (3-2) escaped out of Pool A, while Pool B’s representatives are Kate Cameron (5-0) out of the Granite, Assiniboine’s Jolene Campbell (4-1), and Zoey Terrick (3-2) from McCreary.

“Winning that one in 2012 was pretty special because it was the first, but any chance you get to play in the provincials and be in a small community in Manitoba, it’s the best,” said Lawes.

“There’s nothing like playing in your own home province.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

X: @TaylorAllen31