McCarville wins Superspiel

Krista McCarville found her momentum just in time.

The Thunder Bay skip picked Aileen Sormunen's stone out of the house with her final rock of the seventh end on Sunday, scoring three to earn a 7-4 win in the championship game at the Courtesy Freight Northern Ontario Superspiel.

It was the conclusion most expected, though McCarville and teammates Liz Kingston, Sarah Lang and Ashley Miharija took the long way to get there.

"It feels good now on day three. Day one was a little bit of a struggle and yesterday was a bit of a struggle, but I feel like we rebounded and picked up our game. And I felt like I was reading the ice a little bit better today. So it feels good to win."

The foursome lost two of three in qualifying, forcing them into a must-win quarterfinal on Sunday morning.

They made easy work of Rebecca Hamilton, winning 6-3 thanks to a four-ender in the fifth, then blanked Marlo Dahl 7-0 in the noontime semifinal to reach the final at the Port Arthur Curling Club. 

"I felt like frustration was building up, but that's not like us. That's not our team. I had a really bad shot in the extra end and it was a big downer, but we got through that and I think that was the big thing, just forgetting about the shots you miss and focusing on the good shots."

McCarville was referring to her final stone against Hamilton in the round-robin wrap-up, an open draw for the win that came up short of the rings, her second loss in three games.

It might have been the last bad shot she took.

The four-time Ontario women's champion opened with a pair in the first end, making the elusive draw 24 hours after her Saturday miscue.

Sormunen, who leads the Great Lakes Curling Tour standings thanks to her second-place finish, took one back in the third, then surrendered another pair in fourth when McCarville split the rings strategically and made the draw for the score.

But the Duluth native wasn't finished, not by any means.

Faced with a narrow lane and a house full of rocks in the sixth, Sormunen threaded it through and knocked a pair of McCarville stones back to score the triple and tie the game 4-4.

"We were a little on edge going into that end, being down three. We had to go for it and we had to make sure all of our rocks were in play. She left us a very small opportunity to make it and we took advantage and got back in it."

The situation didn't faze McCarville, who continued her aggressive play, pouring shot after shot into the rings.

With two rocks in the 12-foot, and Sormunen lying shot stone, all-but-frozen to a third McCarville stone and hugging the button, McCarville threw caution to the win, aimed and fired, picking her opponent's rock out of the rings for a triple of her own.

"There was a couple of inches in between, so I thought I have to try to dead pick this or else there's a chance we'll blast it out and only get a deuce," said McCarville, whose squad is off to Brandon next weekend.

"I said to Ashley, let's pick it and if it comes out we still get our deuce, which is pretty good going into the eighth end and it worked out good."

It was a good day for the McCarville household. Husband Mike, who plays third for her brother Joe Scharf's team, advanced to Monday's semifinal on the men's side.

Scharf scored an 8-4 win over Thunder Bay's Trevor Clifford, scoring four in the fifth to keep his title hopes alive.

"It felt good. We haven't been playing a lot of games together as a team, so it's kind of nice to get on a little bit of a roll and start to gel a bit," said Scharf, who fell one shot short of winning the Northern Ontario men's championships this past winter.
Scharf will take on Minnesota's Tyler George, who beat fellow American John Benton 7-2 on Sunday.

In other quarterfinal play, junior Brennan Wark continued his hot play, knocking off Jeff Currie 7-5. He'll play Colin Koivula in the semifinals. Koivula took out Trevor Bonot 7-5.