She’s playing like a champ

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This article was published 29/01/2011 (5590 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ALTONA — She’s the one everyone hasn’t been talking about this week.

And yet there she is this morning anyway — tied for first and looking every bit like a team that could still be standing come the playoffs tonight.

And talking like one too. “We know what we can do,” said Kerri Einarson, 23. “We’ve been playing outstanding all week. If we keep this up, we can win this.”

There will be a couple of other teams who will have something to say about that, however, here at the 2011 Manitoba women’s curling championship.

And topping that list is Morden’s Chelsea Carey. Carey comes into her final round-robin game today at 6-0 and with first-place in her pool already clinched, a berth in tonight’s 1 vs 1 page playoff game already secured.

“Mission accomplished,” said Carey. “You come here to make the playoffs and once we accomplished that and had first place in our sights, we shifted momentum.”

Carey is trailed a game behind in her pool by 2001 Manitoba women’s champion Karen Rosser, who is 5-1. If Rosser can defeat Michelle Montford this morning, she would play in the 2 vs. 2 game tonight.

If Montford (4-2) wins, however, she would force a tiebreaker scenario this afternoon with Rosser and possibly also East St. Paul’s Kim Link, who’s also 4-2.

In the other pool, it is Einarson, Cathy Overton-Clapham and Janet Harvey tied for first at 5-1 heading into today, with Joelle Brown still alive, but barely, at 4-2.

The logjam was created Friday night, when Harvey defeated Overton-Clapham 7-5 while Einarson fell 8-7 to Brown. That sets up two showdowns this afternoon as Einarson plays Overton-Clapham and Brown plays Harvey on the final round-robin draw. Einarson, for the uninitiated, is the former Kerri Flett. Curling under that name, she lost a provincial junior final a couple of years ago but is perhaps better known for two things.

First and most unfortunately, she is the sister of the late Kyle Flett, a top Manitoba junior mens curler who was killed in a snowmobile accident four years ago that rocked the tight-knit junior curling community.

And second, she is known as the skip of the team that became embroiled in a burned rock controversy with Jennifer Jones at this same event a couple of years ago during which the crowd memorably sided with Flett and actually booed Jones for demanding an official remove a Flett stone from play.

But this week, Einarson is making a name for herself for an entirely different reason. Skipping a veteran team of third Janice Blair, second Susan Baleja and lead Alison Harvey, Einarson has quietly flown under the radar here this week all the way to the top of the leaderboard.

It has been a long time coming. The Einarson squad was the very first one to qualify for this event when they won the MCA Women’s Bonspiel way back in January 2010.

All of which is to say that the first one in is now attempting to be the last one out, quite a feat in a sport where there are teams who have changed personnel twice in the time since the Einarson squad won their provincials berth. Still, the youthful skip does not lack in confidence.

“We’ve played these teams many times,” Einarson said, “and we’re playing awesome. I know we’re good enough to win.”

Einarson struggled, however, on the cash spiel season this winter, curling an ambitious — and expensive — World Curling Tour schedule that took them from Calgary to Halifax but yet saw them fail to qualify in anything until they finished second earlier this month in the Manitoba Women’s Bonspiel.

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“We do a lot of travelling so we have to be able to win,” said Einarson, acknowledging the financial hit. “Oh well, it happens.”

The mix of a younger skip with an older team with plenty of experience — Blair, Baleja and Harvey all curled previously with Karen Fallis — sounds like it has had a therapeutic effect on the skip.

“They’re really good with me. I can be a bit edgy at times, just because I’m young. But they calm me down, keep me level and they’re really fun to play with.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

carey sends thurston home D2