NIPIGON – Krista McCarville has stolen her way back to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
The Thunder Bay skip on Saturday stole singles in the fourth and fifth and two more in the sixth, then hung on to hold off a hard-charging Tracy Fleury of Greater Sudbury 10-6 to capture her second straight Northern Ontario women’s provincial curling championship.
The earned the 34-year-old McCarville her sixth Scotties Tournament of Hearts berth, a tournament she finished second at last year in her return to the sport after a lengthy layoff.
The opportunity to go back is an overwhelming though, she said, moments after Fleury’s final shot in the 10th end sailed long to secure the win for McCarville, lead Sarah Potts, second Ashley Sippala, who turned 30 on Saturday, and third Kendra Lilly.
“Just dreaming this whole year of getting back to the Scotties is what we wanted. To lose the final last year in the Scotties, you just want to get back there and prove that you should be there. It’s so unbelievable now,” McCarville said.
Lilly, who lives in Sudbury and curls only occasionally with her teammates, said they weren’t taking anything for granted against a top-ranked team like Fleury’s, regular competitors at Grand Slam of Curling events, despite leading 7-3 after eight ends.
“A 10-end game is a really long game, so we knew we weren’t out of the game when we were up four, so we just wanted to keep pushing. We made it a little interesting in nine, which made it a good game for the fans, I guess,” Lilly said.
“We had a few slip-ups in that end, but other than that we played pretty solid and just wanted to keep it clean.”
After misses by both Lilly and McCarville in the ninth, Fleury had an open draw for three, and made no mistakes to close the gap to 7-6.
Unfortunately in the early going the shots just weren’t there for the team from Sudbury, the inaugural Northern Scotties champs in 2015.
Mistakes by her teammates in the first few rounds put Fleury in a tough spot, forced to make delicate shots to avoid steals, the McCarville foursome taking a more aggressive approach than they did in Saturday’s round-robin finale, when they needed three in the 10th to capture a 5-4 win over Fleury.
“We came out a little flat in the final, for sure,” Fleury said. “But they played really well and put a lot of pressure on us. They made our shots hard and it didn’t go our way, unfortunately,” Fleury said.
McCarville made a clutch hit-and-roll in the fourth end that led to her first steal of the match, then Fleury was unable to get a hit-and-roll of her own and gave up another in the fifth. Fleury was short on her draw in the sixth, leading to two more points for the Thunder Bay side.
Up 5-3, McCarville drew for two in the eighth, then with a one-shot advantage, peeled Fleury’s stones away one by one from the rings in the 10th to seal the win.
The Scotties Tournament of Hearts takes place in St. Catharines, Ont. next month.
