Montford hot out of the hack

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/09/2015 (3973 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Curling time officially arrived in Manitoba over the weekend, as the first big bonspiel of the season roared to life under the Granite’s hallowed roof.

The campaign is young, the ice is new. Still, the women’s draw at the Mother Club Fall Curling Classic seemed a preview of a bigger prize.

With a couple of omissions, among the 20 teams that competed in this opening salvo, almost all of the likely contenders for the 2016 Manitoba women’s championship were there: not only Classic winner Michelle Montford, but also Kerri Einarson, Barb Spencer, Jill Thurston and Kristy McDonald.

They’ll see each other again before January rolls around — but when it does, they will enter one of the most intriguing provincial fields in years.

Why? Well, Jennifer Jones already has her berth at the national Scotties in Grande Prairie, Alta., where she’ll lead her golden foursome as Team Canada. The 2014 Manitoba champion, Chelsea Carey, is now in her second season skipping out of Alberta. So the buffalo jacket is up for grabs, with no hands-down favourite.

It’s the kind of opportunity that makes a certain echelon of local skips perk right up.

“Without Jennifer Jones, someone else gets to go, and I just think the field in Manitoba has been getting really strong over the last few years,” Montford said Sunday. “I think it will be a good provincials.”

It’s a safe bet Montford’s rink will be in the mix come Scotties time. Now, they have an early victory to drive them on: the foursome, which includes third Lisa DeRiviere, second Sara Van Walleghem and lead Sarah Neufeld, won the Mother Club bonspiel, cruising 10-3 over 2015 Manitoba junior champion Beth Peterson.

The Sunday afternoon final was over almost as soon as it began. After the teams traded singles to open, Montford orchestrated a three-ender in the third, and stole three more in the fourth to take a 7-1 lead. In the fifth, Peterson threw a slick hit with her hammer to scoop up a deuce and claw her way back into the game. But a big four-ender in the sixth for Montford brought out the handshakes.

Still, both skips left pleased. It was Team Peterson’s first ‘spiel of the season, it was their third game of the day, and this year also marks Peterson’s graduation into full-time women’s play. Making the final on their first shot was a solid result, the skip thought, and the rest of their bonspiel was strong.

“We just ran out of steam,” Peterson said. “They’re a really good team, and they’ve played women’s for a long time, and played in a lot of finals… the ice was pretty tricky all week, it’s really heavy to start off, then it changes at the flip of a coin. We just couldn’t get a handle on it today, unfortunately.”

On the winning side, Team Montford was coming in a bit closer to hitting their mid-season stride. They’re travelling more this year and kicked things off at the Grand Slam of Curling Tour Challenge in Newfoundland earlier this month, where they placed sixth in the tournament’s second-tier event.

That competition also featured a roundup of some of the Manitoba championship’s most likely contenders, including Einarson (who won), Thurston and Spencer. Oh, and one more familiar name: veteran Cathy Overton-Clapham, who is back in the hack this season with a new team.

Overton-Clapham wasn’t in the draw at the Granite over the weekend. But all the other top Manitoba women’s teams were — and come January, one of them will likely be crowned the new Manitoba champion in Beausejour.

Montford’s team will be eager to make its case. They were widely pegged as a potential darkhorse at the last provincials in Winkler. But in a tough round-robin group that included Jones, Spencer and Darcy Robertson, they finished 4-3 and didn’t advance to the playoffs.

This year, Montford hopes the extra travel will sharpen them up in preparation for provincials. Next up: they’re headed to Calgary over Thanksgiving weekend for the tough Curler’s Corner Autumn Gold Curling Classic.

“We’re hoping to get some good competition and improve the level of our game,” she said.

On the men’s side of the Mother Club Fall Curling Classic, David Bohn clinched the championship over Matt Dunstone, eking out a 4-2 win in an extra end.

Oh, and speaking of Jennifer Jones, the 2015 world silver medallist curled as far as the semifinal at the Stockholm Ladies Cup in Sweden on the weekend. After rolling undefeated through the round robin, Jones’ rink lost the Sunday afternoon semi to Scotland’s Eve Muirhead in an 11-7 shootout. Muirhead moved on to the final, where she was stopped by Ontario star Rachel Homan.

Jones’ team, by the way, had a special guest star at lead. With new mother Dawn McEwen at home and frequent fifth Jennifer Clark-Rouire back in Winnipeg skipping her own team at the Mother Club event, Jones picked up former longtime Homan second Allison Kreviazuk, who moved to Sweden in 2014.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca