Lawes ready for the Russians at the World Junior Curling Championships

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This article was published 13/03/2009 (6396 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE worst thing in a good week so far is that Winnipeg’s Kaitlyn Lawes suffered her only three losses at the 2009 World Junior Curling Championships to teams that didn’t make the playoffs.

The best thing is that Lawes and her Pembina Curling Club foursome of third Jenna Loder, second Laryssa Grenkow and lead Breanne Meakin defeated all three of the other teams that made the playoffs with them.

Lawes lost her final round-robin game 7-4 to Sweden Thursday in Vancouver to finish with a 6-3 record and end up third behind Scotland and Switzerland, putting her in the Page playoff system’s 3 vs. 4 game against Russia’s Galina Arsenkina tonight.

The winner will advance to Saturday’s semifinal against the loser of the Swiss-Scotland 1 vs. 2 game, and the loser of the Canada-Russia match will go home. Lawes, who finished third at the junior worlds last year, beat all three playoff teams during the round-robin.

"Their skip didn’t miss," Lawes said of Swedish skip Anna Hasselborg. "Their team made a lot of really great shots. We played well; they just took advantage of some opportunities early on and we weren’t able to come back.

"It’s a little disappointing, but we still accomplished our first goal, which was making the playoffs," Lawes said by phone from Vancouver, where she, her team and their families were having dinner Thursday night.

Had the Lawes team beaten the Swedes, they would have guaranteed themselves first place. They were trailing 3-2 in the sixth when Sweden scored three for a 6-2 lead. Lawes came back with a deuce in the seventh but the Swedes scored one more in the ninth and ran Lawes out of rocks in the 10th.

Lawes said it’s a bit of a psychological boost knowing that her rink has beaten all three of the other playoff foursomes.

"Yeah, definitely. The three games we lost were to teams that weren’t even close to making the playoffs, which is a little bit unfortunate. But it seems everyone plays their best game against us."

Lawes opened up the week with four straight wins, then lost two, then won twice in a row before Thursday’s loss. But she said they expected to lose some games against such high-calibre opposition.

"I’m really pleased with how we’ve held together as a team and made sure we accomplished our first goal," she said. "I don’t feel as though it was up and down. We got off to a great start and we did have a couple of losses. I’m just happy we got those games out of the way earlier on rather than later."

Rob Meakin, the team’s coach, said getting into the 1 vs. 2 game would have been a bonus. It helps, he said, to know they can beat all three teams.

"It doesn’t hold a whole lot of weight, but we know that again, if we play our style of game and are consistent, we can make it very tough on all of these teams. So we’ve got to come out and play our best and that’s what we’re going to try to do."

chris.cariou@freepress.mb.ca