McCarville rink improves to 2-0 at Scotties

THUNDER BAY – The hometown team remains undefeated heading into Day 3 of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

The Krista McCarville foursome, playing next door to their home Fort William Curling Club on the ice at Fort William Gardens, stole a pair in the fifth end to take the lead for good, adding two in the ninth for good measure and pulled off a 8-5 win on Saturday night against Suzanne Birt’s Prince Edward Island foursome.

McCarville and New Brunswick’s Andrea Crawford, who put up five points over her final two ends to down Emma Miskew’s Wild Card No. 3 team 7-2, are the only 2-0 teams in Pool A after the second day at the national women’s curling championship.

“It feels really good. It’s definitely the way you want to start,” said Sippala, McCarville’s long-time second.

“Hopefully we can just keep building momentum and keep it going.”

It was a bit of a slow start for the Thunder Bay rink, coming off a 7-3 win over Wild Card No. 2, skipped by Chelsea Carey.

Forced to a single in the first, they took back hammer when Birt, who hails from Cornwall, P.E.I., had to settle for one in the second.

Only things didn’t go as planned for Team Northern Ontario in the third, McCarville forced  to attempt an angle raise on her own rock to score one. Instead Birt, whose team includes lead Michelle McQuaid, second Meaghan Hughes and third Marie Christianson, wound up with a steal and a 4-2 lead.

McCarville evened it up in the fourth, then took the lead for good before the break when the PEI skip ticked a Northern Ontario stone trying to bump her own rock forward, giving her opponent a deuce instead of one.

“The fifth end, the steal of two was a little bit unexpected,” McCarville said. “She had a tap and there was a chance we could steal one, but we weren’t really expecting to steal two, so I guess that was a bonus for us.”

PEI closed the gap to one in the sixth, but McCarville made a perfect draw that bit the button to score two more in the seventh, upping their lead to 6-3. Birt completed a double-tap to score a pair in the eighth, but the Northern Ontario skip was left with a hit and stick for two in the ninth to restore their three-point edge. She stole two more in the 10th to put the match away.

Crawford was in a tight match with Miskew until the eighth, when she broke open a 2-2 game with a triple in what proved to be the decisive end.

“We certainly came in here knowing that we belong in this field, so we just wanted to perform like we knew we could. We wanted to pick our performance up a bit tonight from last night. I would say we had a bit of a slow start. We were hanging in there and then we just took off and got stronger as the ends went on,” said Crawford, making her 10th Scotties appearance.

Carey battled with a Nunavut squad bent on an upset, but scored four in the 10th to earn a 12-7 victory, after giving up steals in the fifth, sixth and ninth that twice brought Brigitte MacPhail’s team to within one.

The win evened the two-time champion’s record at 1-1.

“You want to get that goose egg off the board as quick as possible. We didn’t play our best yesterday, so needed to come out strong today. And for the most part, we did,” Carey said.

In the other evening match, Tracy Fleury’s wild-card team (1-1), their skip still quarantining after a positive COVID-19 test, downed Saskatchewan’s Penny Barker 8-7, a team that includes Fort Frances, Ont.’s Jenna Enge, who use to curl with Fleury in Sudbury.

Fleury will not be back on Sunday.

In early-draw action, defending champion Kerri Einarson beat Ontario’s Hollie Duncan 12-5, Nova Scotia’s Christine Black, whose team includes Thunder Bay’s Karlee Everist, edged the Northwest Territories 7-5, Manitoba’s Mackenzie Zacharias eked out a 6-5 win over B.C.’s Mary-Anne Arsenault and Quebec’s Laurie St-Georges edged Alberta’s Laura Walker 9-8.

McCarville, Sippala, Sarah Potts and Kendra Lilly are back on the ice on Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. against Miskew and Wild Card No. 3.