Cameron wins first Buffalo jacket as skip

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This article was published 26/01/2025 (265 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PILOT MOUND — Kate Cameron calmly glided down the ice as her teammates erupted in celebration.

The Winnipeg skip had the same focused look moments earlier before delivering a championship-winning shot.

It was the look of a veteran who had been there before. Except, even this was a first for Cameron.

Cameron and her rink out of the Heather — including third Taylor McDonald, second Allison Flaxey and lead Mackenzie Elias — captured the Manitoba women’s provincial curling championship with a 7-6 victory over Beth Peterson’s Assiniboine-based team at the Pilot Mound Millennium Recreation Complex on Sunday.

It was Cameron’s first Buffalo jacket as a skip, which she will wear when representing Manitoba at the women’s national championship in Thunder Bay, Ont. from Feb. 14-23.

“Winning my first one still seems surreal many years ago, and I think to be able to win other provincials along the way and then now as a skip, if you would have told me that 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have ever believed it,” said Cameron, who won as a third for Michelle Englot in 2017, and is a three-time champion in Alberta.

She’ll join Gimli’s Kerri Einarson and Winnipeg’s Kaitlyn Lawes, who each pre-qualified for nationals, as Manitoba-based teams in the national tournament. It’s the sixth year in a row and eighth time in the last nine years that Cameron will play for the Maple Leaf.

Cameron couldn’t have asked for a more routine shot to return to the top of Manitoba’s mountain. Tied in the 10th end, Peterson’s unguarded yellow rock narrowly sat shot-stone with a piece of the button. However, Cameron, who already had a rock in the four-foot ring and another in the eight-foot circle, simply needed to peel off the yellow stone for the win, which she did without trouble.

“I think if you would’ve told me on Wednesday, before our first game, that I would have had just a peel weight, hit it in anywhere, to win this event, I don’t know that I could have been happier. Just stuck to my process and knew I just had to throw that one good, and it was nice that there was a lot of room to make that,” Cameron said.

“Obviously, we were really excited to win, but I think that game in general is just emotional because we played with two of the girls before. Everyone wants to win. Someone can’t. I’ve been in those girls’ shoes before, and I know how hard that is and how much that stings. I’m really glad we pulled that out … just sometimes it sucks that someone’s on the losing end of that.”

For Peterson, it marks a consecutive runner-up finish in her quest for the elusive Buffalo. She lost a tight contest to Lawes in last year’s provincial final and returned to this year’s event with the same team.

Peterson, the second seed this week, went 5-3 and beat Darcy Robertson’s Assiniboine-based team 9-1 in six ends earlier on Sunday to qualify for the championship.

“Unfortunately, a lot of deja vu,” an emotional Peterson said after the trophy presentation. “We wanted to give Kate a harder shot to throw. You just want to make her throw her last one. Obviously they’re a really good team and they have a good chance of making one when they have hammer, but we just wanted to make her throw. I was just disappointed that we gave her a really easy shot.

“Just hurt and sad. That’s all.”

This year’s championship was once again a tight affair throughout.

Both teams opened with strong defensive efforts, as they traded singles for the first three ends and Cameron stole a point in the fourth after a failed attempt a tap-back by Peterson.

Peterson delivered one of her best shots of the day in the fifth end as a tremendous tap-back of the shot stone in the four-foot ring earned her three points and a 4-3 lead. After a blank in the sixth, Peterson continued her strong defence by forcing Cameron to settle for another single on a takeout in the seventh.

The turning point, however, came in the eighth end with Peterson owning the hammer. Looking for a single, the skip tried to nudge a half-guarded red rock that had a piece of the button at the top of the four foot. Throwing into a pair of rocks, Peterson’s last stone was a bit too strong and slid right through the house, conceding a steal of a pair to Cameron.

“To be honest, I felt like we controlled most of the game up until then, and then it was just a tricky spot,” Peterson said. “In a final like this when your adrenaline is running, to play those soft, light shots is what you want to make someone do, and … Kate made a great draw and that’s what she made me do. Just overthrew it a little bit in a spot that was a little bit straight.”

For the top-seeded Cameron, who went 6-2 and clinched a bye to the final, the win marked the end of a championship run that began with a bit of uncertainty. With regular second Brianna Cullen unavailable, she brought in a long-time friend in Flaxey, who hadn’t played in an event this season.

Flaxey, who Cameron credited for bringing positive energy to the team, played admirably and demonstrated her veteran prowess. It is unclear whether she will play for the team at the national championship next month.

“I think we were so fortunate to be able to pick up Alli. I think she’s been crucial on this team all week. She’s called wicked line and made a bunch of shots, but I think most importantly she just fit in really easily,” Cameron said. “It’s nice that Taylor and I have curled with her before and we played a whole season with her, so she just came in and did whatever we needed, and that’s all we could ask for.”

Cameron has medalled three times at the national championship, winning bronze twice — once while representing Manitoba in 2024 and the other while representing Alberta in 2021 — and silver once while wearing the Buffalo 2017.

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca