It all came down to the final round robin game for Elaine Robson and her Moose Jaw Ford Curling Centre rink at the Everest Canadian Club Curling Championship in Ottawa on Thursday night.
Unfortunately for the local crew, luck just wasn’t on their side at the 14-team event.
Robson and her rink of third Candace Newkirk, second Malysha Johnstone and lead Sheri Logan dropped a 6-3 decision to Prince Edward Island’s Shelly Bradley to cap the round robin with a 2-4 record and one win out of the playoffs.
After going 1-2 through their first three games after an 8-2 loss to Alberta’s Tiffany Steuber, 8-1 win over Nunavut’s Denise Hutchings and 5-4 loss to Manitoba’s Deb McCreanor, Team Robson needed at least a pair of wins through the rest of the draw to have a shot at the medal round.
They got things going Wednesday night with a 7-3 win over Newfoundland’s Jennifer Taylor, scoring three over the first two ends before putting up a three-spot in the fourth to build a 6-1 lead. It was all but academic from there, and Robson would go on to a 7-3 win.
Things didn’t go as well when they were back on the ice Thursday.
Robson opened the day with a 9-7 loss to Northern Ontario’s Tracey Larocque despite leading 7-5 through six ends after a steal of three in the sixth. Larocque got all three back the next end, though, and added a steal of her own in the eighth to take the two-point win.
That set the stage for the battle with Bradley, with the winner moving on to the playoffs.
Northern Ontario’s Larocque would go on to win the championship, scoring two in an extra end to take a 7-5 win over Ontario’s Laurie Shields in the gold medal game Saturday evening.
In the men’s draw, Saskatoon’s Dean Grindhelm posted a 5-1 round robin record to finish on top of the Pool A and reached the championship final before falling 3-2 to Nova Scotia’s Nicholas Deagle, with Deagle scoring one in the final end to secure the win.
