Carey team console selves with superb superspiel win

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This article was published 22/03/2011 (5610 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NOTHING is going to erase the heartbreak of losing the provincial women’s curling final in January.

But in their first event together as a team since their hearts were broken by Cathy Overton-Clapham in Altona, Chelsea Carey and her Morden foursome resumed their winning ways at the Dekalb Superspiel in Morris over the weekend, outlasting a talented field to take down the $6,000 first prize.

Carey defeated youngster Michelle Montford 8-4 in Monday afternoon’s final, but it was her 7-6 extra-end victory over four-time Canadian champion Jennifer Jones in the semifinal earlier in the day that was perhaps the most satisfying for a Carey team that was inconsolable in Altona after they recorded their only loss of the provincials to Overton-Clapham in the final.

“Nothing is going to salve that wound or make that go away,” Carey said Monday night. “But we can’t change that now and we have to look forward. We still have a lot to play for this winter.”

Carey, with third Kristy Jenion, second Kristin Foster and lead Lindsay Titheridge, have an entry in next month’s Players Championship, the final Grand Slam event of the women’s curling season where they will have an excellent chance to win a cash bonus that goes with finishing first overall on the women’s cash tour this year.

That same bonus is also available on the men’s tour and Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen is in the driver’s seat to take that one down.

McEwen, who experienced heartbreak of his own this winter in losing the final of the men’s provincials to freshly-minted Brier champion Jeff Stoughton in February, lost the men’s final in Morris on Monday, 5-4 in an extra end to 2010 world champion Kevin Koe of Edmonton.

While he had to settle for second again, McEwen said he liked what he saw from his team in their first event since losing to Stoughton in Beausejour.

“The mood was pretty light again,” McEwen said Monday night. “We were like we were all year long, except for the provincials.

“It was nice to have fun on the ice again.”

With a $27,000 men’s purse and a $16,000 women’s purse, the Dekalb Superspiel has morphed into one of the premier late-season bonspiels on the cash circuit.

Morris organizers once again attracted elite fields this year, including Jones on the women’s side and American champion Pete Fenson and China’s Luan Chen on the men’s side. The latter two teams will represent their countries at the World Men’s Curling Championship in Regina, April 2-10.

The Morris event will be moving dates next winter, however. Organizer Lorne Hamblin explained that a conflict with a provincial women’s event on next season’s curling calendar has forced the Morris event to a new weekend, Nov. 24-27.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca