Einarson outshines McEwen, Jones at slam event

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This article was published 14/09/2015 (3979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

IT feels too warm to be talking about curling, but the rocks are already roaring, and the first Grand Slam of the season ended with a Manitoba success story.

Jennifer Jones? Nah, the reigning Canadian champ narrowly missed a tiebreaker win at the Tour Challenge in Paradise, N.L. and didn’t make the playoffs.

What about Mike McEwen? His foursome was rightly pleased with its season debut, but it ended with a semifinal loss to Newfoundland hero Brad Gushue.

In this case, the spotlight landed on the second tier of the Tour Challenge women’s draw, where teams one step down from the world elite duked it out over the last week. A coveted prize awaited the winner — and now, that prize belongs to Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson and her gutsy crew.

Sunday morning, in an arena so foggy Einarson quipped she could hardly see the broom at the other end of the sheet, the Gimli skip led her team to the tier-two championship. The best part: the victory clinched Team Einarson a berth in the elite Masters of Curling grand slam in October.

“It was amazing,” Einarson said of the win, before boarding a plane home. “Just goosebumps all through my body and all smiles. It brought tears to my eyes.”

The tier two final against Saskatchewan’s Team Chantelle Eberle — actually skipped by former Canadian champ Amber Holland, filling in for the injured captain — went Einarson’s way from the start. The Manitobans snagged a deuce in the first, then stole one in the second to take a 3-0 lead.

After the teams traded singles for a few ends, Einarson struck for a three-ender in the sixth and stole another single to seal the win. The final score stood at 8-2, and it was well deserved: Einarson, third Selena Kaatz, second Liz Fyfe and lead Kristin MacCuish outshot Team Eberle across the board.

What’s more: even though it was their first time on the ice this season, the Einarson rink didn’t lose a single game at the Tour Challenge. They started “shaky,” the skip acknowledged, with two consecutive games in which they had to steal multiple points in the last end to win.

In their second match, they stole a whopping three against fellow Manitoban Jill Thurston to come out ahead. Then the team started clicking.

“We were just excited to be in an arena setting again and playing on great ice,” Einarson said. “We were so pumped to be in this kind of event. I think that really helped.”

It was a long time coming. The Tour Challenge championship is the first event victory for Einarson’s rink in their three years together, but that fact doesn’t really tell their story. Einarson has a knack for nailing high-pressure shots, and her team competes hard — especially in the provincial Scotties.

In 2014 they rolled undefeated through the provincial round robin and fell only to Chelsea Carey in the final. Last year they did the same, but it was Jennifer Jones who stood in the way. But Team Einarson gave the Olympic champions a run for their money — a battle made more poignant by the fact MacCuish is Jones’ second Jill Officer’s niece.

Now, Einarson is hunting for the experience to lift her team to the next level. With twin daughters at home, the skip wasn’t able to get on the road in recent years as much as the top contenders. But last year, her foursome ventured more outside of Manitoba, and for 2015-16 they’ve bumped the travel up again.

For instance, in October they’ll head to the Prestige Hotels and Resorts Curling Classic in Vernon, B.C., where they’ll tangle with the likes of Carey (now skipping the former Heather Nedohin rink of Alberta) and Saskatchewan’s Stefanie Lawton. They also have bonspiels in Calgary and Saskatchewan on the horizon.

“If you want to beat a top team, you have to get out there and play those top teams,” said Einarson, ranked 27th in the world on order of merit. “If you can afford to get out, that’s a big key to being successful. I think we’re in a good spot right now. If we keep curling like this, we will be in the top 15.”

Now they have their berth in the Masters to help on that journey. There, Einarson will be pitted against a whole parade of the world’s top curlers — you know, folks with names such as Homan and Sweeting and Jones. It will be a valuable test for a young team eager to polish its game.

“I think we’re just going into it with an open mind,” Einarson said. “Go out there and have fun, and take the experience in and enjoy.”

The Tour Challenge is a new stop on the Grand Slam circuit, and the top-tier men’s and women’s draws gathered a predictable group of sharp-shooters.

Jones is currently playing with alternate Jennifer Clark-Rouire at lead, for a joyous reason: usual lead Dawn McEwen and her husband Mike welcomed their first daughter, Vienna Dawn, in August. (“Linescore-watching sucks,” McEwen quipped on Twitter before the Tour Challenge, in wishing her teammates well.)

The Jones rink didn’t have the outing they wanted. But fellow Manitoban Kristy McDonald made it to the quarter-finals, where she fell to Korea’s Eun Jung Kim.

On the men’s side, reigning Manitoba champion Reid Carruthers was the lone undefeated skip after the preliminary round, but he was upset in the quarter-final by Minnesota’s John Shuster. Still, that’s back-to-back playoffs for Carruthers, who came in second to Gushue at the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard the week prior.

Finally, McEwen’s team launched its season at the Tour Challenge, and they’ll continue the 2015-16 campaign a little happier. Considering they only stepped on the ice Tuesday, they tweeted, making it to an entertaining semi against Gushue was a good start.

Hot off the victory in Oakville, Ont., and a wild crowd favourite on home ice, Gushue’s rink threw a little sharper in the semi. Without the hammer in seven, McEwen managed to set a trap that might have brought him a steal of two and a 5-3 lead coming home. But his last shot flashed wide of the target, a rare groaner from the world’s No. 1 skip, and a miss by second Matt Wozniak in the eighth caused their comeback hopes to melt away.

Gushue didn’t get to make it two in a row, though: Alberta’s Kevin Koe edged him in the extra end of the final, to take the inaugural Tour Challenge tier one title. On the women’s side, Switzerland’s Silvana Tirinzoni toppled laser-focused Canadian skip Rachel Homan in an upset.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca