Ontario skip Mark Ideson and his team decided to take their chances with a measurement.
It turned out to be the right call.
Ideson’s yellow stone proved to be about an inch or so closer to the Fort William Curling Club button than where Northern Ontario’s Carl Levesque left his near miraculous extra-end finale Friday afternoon, earning the London, Ont. curler and his team a berth in Saturday’s 3-4 Page Playoff courtesy of a 10-9 tiebreaker triumph.
Ideseon threw away his final rock, leaving the win or loss in fate's hands.
“Our whole team decided collectively because it was really close. Carl made an amazing shot in there. Everyone sort of thought it was yellow and we took our chances. I didn’t want to mess anything up,” said Ideson, speaking of teammates Shannon Wilcox, Tony Reynen and Katie Paialunga.
It was a measure of revenge for the Ontario squad, who earlier in the day had a chance to win their way into the playoffs at the Canadian Wheelchair Curling Championship, but instead dropped a 9-2 decision to the pseudo hosts of the week-long event. Both teams finished 5-4.
“We stubbed our toe this morning and we felt it and we learned from it,” Ideson said. “We had a better game this afternoon. Our team had a good game and it was a fantastic, fantastic game.”
Ontario, which opened a 4-0 lead in the first end, only to see Northern Ontario chip away and get back on even ice after the fourth, will take on Quebec in the 3-4 playoff, while Alberta and Saskatchewan will duke it out in the 1-2 game.
The winner of the latter match gets a berth in Sunday’s final, with the loser taking on the winner of the Ontario-Quebec match in the semifinal.
For Levesque it’s time to reflect on the week that was.
“Yeah, we gave it a good run,” the subdued skip said after the match, which he extended to an extra end by engineering three points in the eighth end, using Ontario backing to secure the final point on his last shot.
“But you miss some, and this is what comes out of it.”
Playing either from behind most of the match, or without the hammer when they finally did draw even on two occasions, made for difficult strategy, he added.
“We were good at coming back, and we knew what we had to do,” said Levesque, whose squad includes lead Sharon LaFroye, second Mel Prairie and third Rick Bell.
Of his shot in the ninth, Levesque said he was left with a tough decision, and went with his gut.
“There were two ways of hitting that and knocking that blue into the yellow. But it just didn’t go far enough. I was short about a half-an-inch,” he said.
“It was a great week. Everything went well. Everything was well-organized and co-ordinated and we’ll see what happens from here.”
Saturday’s 3-4 games is scheduled for 10:30 a.m., with the 1-2 match on at 2:30 p.m. The semifinal goes Sunday morning and the final will be contest that afternoon at 2:30 p.m.
