THUNDER BAY – Al Hackner should stay away more often.
With the former two-time world champion skip and his lead Gary Champagne tending to the Northern Ontario squad at the Canadian senior men’s curling championship in Sault Ste. Marie, Trevor Bonot grabbed spares Kory Carr and Dylan Johnston from the sidelines to join team regular Jamie Childs and outlasted Gary Weiss in Saturday’s final to capture a second straight Tbaytel Men’s Major League of Curling championship.
Bonot, who knocked out Mike Pozihun’s squad in Saturday’s semifinal, took the match 6-4 when Weiss’s draw to the four-foot to the rings sailed through the house in the eighth end, the steal of two completing a late match comeback that saw the winning side score two with the hammer in the seventh to tie the finale 4-4.
Sometimes you just happen to catch a break, said Bonot, who last year led Canada to a silver medal at the World Mixed Curling Championship in Switzerland.
“Anything can happen in a one-end game,” said Bonot, admitting once he fell behind by two in the sixth the goal was to find a way to get them right back in the seventh and take his chances without the hammer in eight.
Weiss was disappointed, but said he’ll use the playoff run as a warm-up for the Northern Ontario men`s provincial play-downs, which begin on Feb. 7 in Little Current.
“There’s never really a good way to lose, is there?” the 44-year-old asked.
“That’s curling. It comes down to a millimeter here, an inch there. You throw how many rocks a game and it always seems to come down to that last rock. We like to make them more than we don’t, but sometimes this happens. It’s unfortunate.”
Bonot struck first, stealing a pair in the opening end at the Port Arthur Curling Club.
Weiss, who tied Mike McCarville at 10-3 atop the Major League of Curling round-robin standings, had a chance to set up a deuce of his own in the third, but was heavy in his attempt to split the rings – a sign of things to come – and settled for a second straight blank end. He got one back in the fourth, then stole three more in the sixth to jump in from 4-2.
“That’s typically our style, especially when Kory and I play together, is to kind of get that deuce and try to maintain it and control the game,” said Bonot, who earned his first Major League of Curling title. “In six we just had a couple of unfortunate misses and got caught on some tricky ice that shifted momentum a little bit.
“But then we kept it cool and made our shots in seven and tied it up.”
Missed opportunities were the story of the front end shots in the eighth, but Bonot managed to partially clog up the rings with a pair of stones, one at the top of the 12-foot, one on the left side, back-eight, with a guard for partial cover.
Weiss, whose team includes Deron Sukar, Aaron Rogalski and Mark Beazley, went for the draw, but had too much on it, handing a sixth championship to Hackner since 1980, when he won his first.
Bryan Burgess, skipping for Allen Macsemchuk took the consolation final, downing Krista McCarville 6-3.
