Lott has smooth trip to provincials

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This article was published 31/12/2011 (5259 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT was a decidedly smoother ride to the junior provincials for Winnipeg Beach skip Tanner Lott this year.

For the second consecutive year, Lott earned his berth into the Manitoba Junior Men’s Curling Championship through the Christmas Bonspiel, picking up one of two final berths up for grabs on Friday in the long-standing annual Christmas event.

Lott didn’t even have to play a game on Friday to earn the berth, qualifying automatically along with Charleswood’s Derek Harrison, when the only two teams remaining that could have challenged Lott and Harrison for a provincials berth — Assiniboine- Memorial’s Kyle Thiessen and Elmowood’s Tyler Luner — were eliminated in their C-side games Friday morning.

All of which was a much less eventful way to earn a provincials berth than the way Lott did it last year.

Driving to Winnipeg for his team’s qualifying game on Dec. 29, Lott rolled his truck at least two times — he’s not sure, it might have been more — in a ditch along Highway 8.

Police, fire and ambulance personnel quickly arrived but Lott — who had some cuts and scrapes, but was otherwise fine — wanted nothing to do with the medical treatment that was being recommended. He was forced to sign some waiver forms at the crash scene and then caught a ride to his game — where his team promptly won their berth, despite having been penalized two points and forced to surrender the hammer because of their skip’s late arrival.

While this year’s berth was less dramatic, it was no less valuable to the 19-year-old icemaker, who for the second year in a row had to earn his provincials berth in the last chance bonspiel.

“I guess we’re a team that just likes to come from behind,” said Lott. “But we’ve accomplished what we wanted to, which was get to the show.”

It wasn’t an entirely smooth ride on Friday for Lott, however — he had a chance to also win the overall title on Friday afternoon but was defeated 5-4 by Pembina’s Daniel Birchard.

Birchard was the runner-up at last year’s provincials and heads into next week’s provincials as the second seed and riding an undefeated run through the Christmas Bonspiel.

“We hadn’t played for a few weeks, we’d just been practising and so all we really wanted coming in here was a chance to get ready for provincials,” said Birchard. “We played all the teams we’ll play there and we just wanted to win all our games so we could get on a streak and hopefully carry it into the provincials on a high.”

On the junior women’s side, the teams riding a high heading into next week will be Assiniboine Memorial’s Katie Spencer — who won the overall bonspiel championship with a 4-2 win over Victoria’s Beth Peterson on Friday — as well as St. Vital’s Jackie Hebert, who earned her provincials berth through the bonspiel.

Hebert actually qualified late Thursday night with a win over Pembina’s Christine MacKay. The other berth was being decided late Friday in a tiebreaker game with Stonewall’s Rebecca Lamb beating Assiniboine’s Sara Oliver 5-2 to emerge with a berth from what was a four-team playoff.

 

LOOSEHAIRS — The winner of the youth open event at the Christmas Bonspiel was Assiniboine Memorial’s Colin Kurz, who won the championship game 7-1 over Charleswood’s Zachary Lewco late Friday night.

 

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca