If things continue to follow the same pattern for Penny Barker as they did last season, it’s definitely a bit of deja vu she’ll be happy to take.
Barker and her rink of third Christie Gamble, second Jenna Enge and lead Danielle Sicinski put together a 3-1 round robin record before rolling through the playoffs and taking a 9-3 five-end win over Delisle’s Sherry Anderson in the championship final of the Moose Jaw SWCT stop Sunday afternoon at the Moose Jaw Curling Centre.
It’s not that far off from what Barker put together last season, where her win in Moose Jaw helped build momentum to her second Viterra Scotties provincial championship.
“This is only our third weekend of the year, so we wanted to come out and throw consistent and play confident and we knew that if we put eight shots together, in end it would go our way,” Barker said shortly after posing for the customary team picture. “And we’re just happy to be playing at home. It’s nice to stay close to home for once, we’ve been playing a little further away and it’s just relaxing being here and we tend to play really well here, so it’s nice to get the win.”
Barker posted a 3-1 record through the round robin and put a ton of points on the board in the early going -- outscoring the opposition 20-6 in her first two games -- and was able to ride that momentum as the tournament progressed.
“We’ve had a lot of games this year where we’ve had to come back from quite the deficits, so this weekend it was nice to get off to a really strong start, it was ‘what do we do now, we’re not down?!’” laughed Barker. “But when it’s early in the game we know that there’s lots of time left, we know these teams are going to put pressure on us and it’s just making that shot and still trying to be precise. Teams can come back pretty quickly if you don’t, so I thought we did a pretty good job of that this weekend.”
Barker’s lone loss in the round robin was a 6-5 defeat at the hands of Anderson, the four-time defending national women’s senior champion.
She was able to rebound nicely, though, defeating Sherilee Orsted -- who includes Moose Jaw’s Candace Newkirk at third -- in the quarter-final before taking a 7-5 win over Brooklyn Stevenson in the semifinal.
The title game saw Barker and Anderson each take single points the first two ends before Barker struck for four in the third. Anderson replied with a deuce the next end, but another Barker four-spot in the fifth brought things to an early end.
“She’s such a strong player and that’s such a strong team, they’ve won four senior championships and gone to worlds a few times, and they always put a strong game together and make us work for every point,” Barker said. “So it was nice to score those four to get that kind of a lead since it’s not going to happen very often.”
The win gives Barker a host of valuable points on the Sask Women’s Curling Tour and as a result moves the rink another step closer to automatically qualifying for the Viterra Scotties as they look to defend their 2022 title.
“Everybody always asks ‘do you get a free bye back in’ and nope, you earn your spot again, you’re starting from square one,” Barker said. “So this gives us a pretty good chance of getting an automatic berth into provincials, there are a few more chances here to pick up points and we’ll be doing what we can to get one of the spots.”
Cindy Ricci -- who as Cindy Street won multiple provincial championships playing out of the Hillcrest Sports Centre -- finished 2-2 and just missed the playoffs, while Moose Jaw’s Skylar Ackerman and Elaine Robson both saw their rinks finish 1-3 in the round robin,
