Ryan one step closer to junior curling final appearance

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This article was published 25/01/2019 (2753 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s JT Ryan upended Saskatchewan’s Ryan Kleiter 9-4 to lock down the third and final men’s playoff spot at the Canadian Junior Curling Championships in Prince Albert, Sask., on Friday afternoon.

Saskatchewan jumped out to a 4-1 lead after four ends, but Ryan rallied with a deuce in the fifth and two steals to take a 5-4 lead after seven.

In the ninth, Kleiter attempted a tricky cross-the-rings double and narrowly missed, giving up a single and trailing by two with hammer in the final end.

Facing a nearly impossible angle-raise takeout with his final shot, Kleiter flashed to give Manitoba the triumph.

The result sets up a semifinal showdown between Kleiter, who finished second in the championship pool with an 8-2 record, and Ryan, who finished with a 7-3 mark.

“I feel pretty good — we played really well (today), which is nice,” said Ryan, whose team includes third Jacques Gauthier, second Jordan Peters and lead Cole Chandler.

“It’s nice to have a game like that going forward.”

Ryan’s crew is at its third straight nationals and the Assiniboine Memorial skip said the experience is paying off.

“I think we haven’t been frazzled by anything so far this week, even when we were losing games,” he said.

“We never got too down on ourselves.”

Ryan and his team were eliminated in a tiebreaker at the 2017 nationals and won a tiebreaker before losing in a semifinal a year ago. Friday’s win allowed them to avoid an additional game this time around.

“This is the first year we didn’t have to play a tiebreaker, which is pretty nice,” Ryan said.

“It’s a little less games and gives a little more time to rest. Besides that, it feels pretty well the same. It think we’re getting into a groove at the right time, so hopefully that’ll continue.”

Ryan and Kleiter meet again in today’s semifinal at 7 p.m. with the winner advancing to Sunday’s final at 3 p.m. against B.C.’s Tyler Tardi.

Tardi, who completed the championship pool at 9-1 after a 7-3 win over Nova Scotia’s Graeme Weagle on Friday, advanced directly to the gold-medal game and a shot at a third consecutive national junior crown.

In women’s action, meanwhile, Manitoba champion Mackenzie Zacharias had a strong debut at the nationals, but finished just out of a tiebreaker for a playoff spot, beating Northern Ontario 11-3 to complete the championship pool in fifth place with a 6-4 record.

Alberta’s Selena Sturmay earned a spot in Sunday’s final with a 10-0 mark, while a logjam of three teams tied at 7-3 — Nova Scotia’s Kaitlyn Jones, the defending Canadian and world junior women’s champ, Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges and B.C.’s Sarah Daniels — meant a tiebreaker was required to determine the last playoff spot.

Based on teams’ last-shot-draw performance, Nova Scotia went directly to the semifinal and will play B.C., 8-6 winners over Quebec in the tiebreaker.

Zacharias, 19, and her Elmwood team of third Lauryn Kuzyk, 19; second Emily Zacharias, 17; and lead Caitlyn Labossiere, 20, started the day knowing they had been eliminated from the playoff hunt.

“We went in with a positive attitude and wanted to make the most of it. We wanted to do the best we could. I think we only had one really bad game (a 15-6 loss to B.C. on Wednesday),” Mackenzie Zacharias said, noting her entire team is eligible to defend its provincial title next season. “Other than that, we played really well in all our games. Just yesterday, we had two good games and just came out on the wrong side. That happens sometimes. I don’t think we changed our game strategy for today, we just ended up coming out on the right side today.”

Zacharias said her team will grow from the experience.

“I think it’s going to help us tremendously,” Zacharias said.

“I mean, we’re going to be able to take this next year into provincials and we know where we have to get to and know what we have to get there.”

The squad’s youngest member, Emily Zacharias, will now be part of Meghan Walter’s team at the upcoming under-18 provincials slated for Swan River, March 7-10. Becky Friesen and Mackenzie Elias are the other members of the team.

— staff, with files from Curling Canada