The Tracy Fleury rink (Crystal Webster, Jennifer Wylie, Amanda Gates, Jenna Enge) dug themselves out of an early hole at the 2018 Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Penticton.
After dropping their first two games of Pool "A" play, the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club quintet have managed to string together five consecutive victories, all while knocking a pair of opponents from the ranks of the unbeaten.
With their record of 5-2, the Northern Ontario champions are now in a three-way tie with Nova Scotia and Manitoba for second place in their grouping, with four teams moving on to the "championship pool".
Things were not looking anywhere near this rosy earlier in the week. Facing a red-hot skip in Mary-Anne Arsenault in their opener, Fleury and company dropped a 10-4 decision, making it back to back setbacks with an 8-5 loss to New Brunswick (Sylvie Robichaud) the next day.
Things started to look up, somewhat, when Northern Ontario did the expected by beating Chelsea Duncan and her Yukon rink 8-5, but it was a 7-5 triumph over Einarson, 3-0 coming into the game, that really provided a boost.
Another rock solid effort on Tuesday afternoon propelled the locals to a 7-4 win over Saskatchewan (Sherry Anderson), followed by a 9-5 decision over the Jones crew from Manitoba.
Team Fleury wrapped up pool play with a tightly contested 7-6 win over Kerry Galusha's Northwest Territories rink, with the Sudbury ladies scoring one in the tenth end to seal the victory.
The roller coaster sequence certainly provided some second thoughts for the NOCA championship team making their third trek to the Tournament of Hearts.
"It's a little bit scarier with this new format," said Fleury.
"Before, you could have a slower start and it wasn't as big of a deal, because you still had all of these games to come."
The template introduced in 2018 sees a total of 16 teams broken into two pools of eight, with the top four from each pool moving on to a second phase of the competition.
"All of a sudden, losing the first two was kind of scary."
Thankfully, this is a more mature and experienced version of Team Fleury that is taking to the ice in British Columbia, one that is well equipped to right the ship rather quickly.
"I think maybe in the past, we would have been a bit more rattled about it," Fleury said. "But since that start, we've kind of been rolling. We're catching on to the ice really well, and just playing well as a team."
The girls are back on the ice to kick off the championship pool at 5 p.m. Thursday evening to take on Casey Scheidegger's Alberta rink (6-1). Team Fleury will play their second championship pool game at 10 p.m. against Michelle Englot's Team Canada rink (5-2).
