LITTLE CURRENT, Ont. – Trevor Bonot will play for a spot at the Brier.
Bonot on Sunday morning ended Zach Warkentin’s magical run at the Northern Ontario Men’s Curling Championship in Little Current, Ont., scoring four in the fifth end to blow open a 4-1 game.
They went on to win 9-2, shaking hands after seven ends.
Warkentin had won six straight contests to reach the semfinal, but No. 7 wasn’t in the cards.
Bonot, lead Kurtis Byrd, second Joran Potts and third Mike McCarville were in control from the get-go, despite the Thunder Bay skip hitting and sticking trying to blank the end.
Losing hammer was a minor hiccup.
Bonot wrangled a steal of one in the second and threaded the needle on his final shot of the third to lie two.
Warkentin, who curls out of the Port Arthur Curling Centre, wasn’t able to remove them and gave up the deuce.
Bonot, who lost 10-4 to his championship opponent, defending champion Tanner Horgan of Sudbury, said it’s a dream come true to have a shot at a Brier berth, something the former Canadian mixed curling champion says is sorely missing from his resume.
“It means a lot,” Bonot said. “We just played a team that was on a roll and showed that we can stay composed. We have to do that one more time. We’re up against a very strong team, the defending champs, but if we play like we can, I think we can give them a good game.”
Beating Horgan won’t be easy. He rolled through A-side and has yet to lose, and has had plenty of rest while the rest of the competition whittled the 14-team field down to the final two.
McCarville, who curled at the 2014 Brier, said it’s what they came to Manitoulin Island for, and unlike last year, when they lost to Sandy MacEwan in the semifinal in Kenora, they’ve taken it to the next level in 2024.
But there’s still work to do. McCarville said they’ve already put the round-robin loss to Horgan behind them.
“That score wasn’t really indicative of what the game was like. We gave up one big steal in eight. It was a real battle before that. It was back-and-forth, lots of shots made. We know it’s going to be that type of game, where you have to play really, really well,” McCarville said.
“But we know we have that in us and if we bring our A game, we’ve got a good chance.”
The final is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. at the Little Current Recreation Centre.
