Moose Jaw’s Penny Barker and Pat Simmons are both in serious contention for playoff spots after picking up wins Thursday at the Home Hardware Olympic Curling Pre-Trials in Liverpool, N.S.
Barker and her rink of third Christie Gamble, second Jenna Enge and lead Danielle Sicinski made things plenty interesting in their meeting with B.C.’s Corryn Brown, scoring six over the final three ends on their way to a 10-7 victory.
“It’s exactly the way we wanted to start the seventh end,” Barker told www.curling.ca after the match. “Joking aside, we’ve been there before. We just had to be resilient, keep making shots. We had done well earlier in the game; it was just a matter of putting that behind us and keep trucking.”
Barker led 4-2 through four ends after scoring deuces in the first and fourth, but Brown -- who represented her province at the 2020 Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Moose Jaw -- tied the game in the fifth and promptly stole three the next end to go up 6-4.
The Moose Jaw Ford Curling Centre crew took over from there.
A three-ender in the seventh gave Barker a 7-6 edge, and she’d steal one in the eighth and two more in the ninth before running Brown out of rocks in the final end.
The win saw Barker improve to 3-2 to hold down the third and final playoff spot, with her sole remaining game against Krista McCarville and her 4-0 Thunder Bay foursome on Friday morning.
“It’s nice to be kind of in control of our own destiny at this point,” Barker said. “We need to win that last one and hope that’s enough to get us into the playoffs. Play well — that’s all we can really do. Play well, make shots and put ourselves in a good position for the weekend.”
Simmons and his Winnipeg Beach, Man. foursome of third Colton Lott, second Kyle Doeriing and lead Tanner Lott didn’t need late-game dramatics to secure their second win of the event and improve to 2-2 with a 9-6 victory over Quebec’s Vincent Roberge.
Simmons scored two in the second end and answered a Roberge deuce with back-to-back two-enders to build a 6-3 lead through five frames. Roberge got two back the next end to make things interesting, but after the two teams exchanged singles in the seventh and eighth, Simmons picked up another deuce to lead 9-6 before running the Quebec foursome out of rocks.
The 2-2 record puts Simmons in a three-way tie for the final Pool A playoff spot. Their final game on Friday afternoon is against one of his fellow 2-2 rinks in Edmonton’s Karsten Sturmay.
The top three teams from each playoff pool advance to the championship round beginning Saturday, with the top two teams from the event advancing to the Roar of the Rings Olympic Qualifier in Saskatoon Nov. 20-28.
