Blanchard 1 win from final

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This article was published 08/01/2012 (5360 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Derek BLANCHARD is one win away from playing in his third provincial junior men’s curling final in four years.

Assiniboine Memorial’s Blanchard — who was the lead on the Michael Johnson teams that lost the 2009 and 2010 Manitoba finals — defeated Pembina’s Daniel Birchard 6-4 Saturday evening to improve to 6-0 and clinch first-place overall in the eight-team Red Group at the junior men’s provincial curling championship at West Kildonan Curling Club.

While Blanchard still has one more round-robin game to play this morning, the win over Birchard automatically vaults his foursome — third Trevor Calvert, second Scott Bruce and lead Ty Envik — into tonight’s 1 vs. 1 Page playoff game.

The winner of tonight’s game advances straight to Monday afternoon’s final, while the loser gets a second chance in Monday morning’s semifinal against the winner of tonight’s 2 vs. 2 game.

Blanchard and Birchard were both at 5-0 heading into Saturday afternoon’s game and Birchard was riding a nine-game win streak — which included an undefeated run through the Christmas Bonspiel — when he ran into Blanchard.

“We had pretty high expectations coming into the week,” Blanchard said Saturday, “but we know we still have a lot of work ahead.”

The third-year business student at University of Manitoba moved up to skip for the first time last winter and had a hard-luck tale to tell for it at the 2011 provincials, finishing a respectable 5-2 in the round-robin but failing to advance to the playoffs in a pool where two losses was one too many.

“Usually 5-2 gets you at least a tiebreaker,” said Blanchard, who along with Calvert and Bruce is 20 and in his final year of junior eligibility.

“This is the last one. We’ve got to make it count.”

The loss by Birchard dropped his team’s record to 5-1 and put them alone in second place. St. Vital’s Matt Dunstone is alone in third at 4-2.

“This has definitely been one of the toughest pools we’ve been in,” said Birchard, whose team is playing in its sixth provincials together. “More than half the teams coming into this had a good shot at the playoffs.”

In the junior men’s Black Group, 2010 junior champion and top seed Joey Witherspoon of Fort Rouge was alone in first at 5-0 heading into Saturday night’s late draw. West Kildonan’s Kyle Doering and Deer Lodge’s Cole Peters were a game behind Witherspoon at 4-1.

Meanwhile, at the junior women’s provincial curling championship at the Minnedosa Curling Club, St. Vital’s Shannon Birchard — the second seed this week and younger sister of Daniel Birchard — is 5-1 and alone in first place atop the Red Group heading into her final round-robin draw this morning.

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Birchard defeated clubmate Briane Meilleur 6-5 Saturday evening in what was a battle for first place. The win clinches Birchard at least a playoff tiebreaker game, while Meilleur dropped into a three-way tie for second place at 4-2, alongside former teammate Erika Sigurdson of Stonewall and the upstart Dauphin rink being skipped by Sydney Arnal.

Things were even tighter in the Black Group in Minnedosa, where Victoria’s Alyssa Vandepoele, Assiniboine Memorial’s Katie Spencer and Stonewall’s Rebecca Lamb were all tied for first place at 4-1 heading into Saturday’s late draw.

Vandepoele, the top seed in Minnedosa this week, sustained her first loss of the week Saturday afternoon, falling 9-4 to Lamb.

“It had been going pretty good,” said Vandepoele. “This was a little bit of a hiccup. But there’s lots of week left.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca