It was easy enough to find the Sudbury content amidst the top-end curling teams that drew invitations to the Boost National in Sault Ste Marie this past week, the most recent stop within Pinty's Grand Slam of Curling Tour.
That said, what the quartet of rinks with local talent took away from the event varied greatly from team to team.
Easily the most successful of the group, the rink skipped by Thunder Bay native Krista McCarville, one that features Sudbury native Kendra Lilly at vice, along with a front-end of Ashley Sippala and Sarah Potts, came within a single win of advancing to the final.
Seeded in the same pool as fellow Northern Ontarian Tracy Fleury, Team McCarville overcame a tough opening game loss to Rachel Homan (8-2), bouncing back with four straight wins before losing a heart-breaker in the semis.
The McCarville foursome evened their record at 1-1 with an 8-3 win over Allison Flaxey of Ontario, following up a three point end in the fourth with a steal of three in the fifth.
Building up leads of 3-0 and 5-1 in game three, the Thunder Bay based squad bested Alberta's Chelsea Carey 7-3, and then downed the Fleury crew by the same score, once again thanks in part to a great start, up 5-1 after four ends.
Back against Homan in the round of eight, McCarville surged to a 5-1 lead but found themselves deadlocked at 5-5 after six ends of play, before sealing the victory with three in the seventh.
The defending Scotties' finalists looked in great shape to advance to the championship match-up, leading Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland 5-2 after six ends. A count of two in the seventh made things close, but it was a steal of another two in eight that truly dealt the dagger to McCarville, Lilly and company.
By contrast, the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club team of Fleury, Crystal Webster (vice), Jennifer Wylie (second), Amanda Gates (lead) and Jenna Walsh (fifth) had to content themselves with a win over Homan (6-4), finishing round robin play with a record of 1-3.
Fleury fell to Flaxey (6-5), Carey (8-5) and McCarville, squeezing in a victory over the two-time medal winner (silver in 2014, bronze in 2015) at the Women's World Curling Championships.
For the junior rink of Tanner Horgan, Jacob Horgan, Nicholas Bissonnette and Maxime Blais, the event was all about experience. The local team, who advanced to the finals of the Canadian Junior Curling Championship in January of 2016 and are expected to rank among the top contenders again this year, also posted a mark of 1-3 while testing themselves against some of the biggest names in the sport.
Team Horgan were beaten 9-4 by Brad Gushue of Newfoundland in their opening contest, as the Maritime crew scored three in the second end and matched that in the third, without the benefit of final stone.
It was all Northern Ontario in game two as the Brad Jacobs juggernaut doubled the youngsters 6-3, in a game that was close after four ends (Horgan trailed 3-2), but broke open as Jacobs scored two in the fifth, adding a steal of one in the sixth.
Keeping things close, as well, against Brendan Bottcher from Alberta (the encounter opened with three straight blanked ends), Horgan and company would see game three slip away after surrendering three in the fourth and a steal of five in the fifth.
Thankfully, the locals would leave on a positive note, picking up a 6-4 extra end win over Steve Laycock of Saskatchewan. The Copper Cliff Curling Club representatives needed to score two in the eighth to force an extra end, and then completed the comeback with a steal of two in the ninth.
In a similar vein, the Kelsey Roque team, which includes lead Jennifer Gates of Sudbury, is also relatively young, learning from the stretch of tough games in the Sault that encompassed losses to Eve Muirhead of Scotland (8-3), Tirinzoni (8-2), eventual champion Kerri Einarson (9-6) and Anna Sidorova of Russia (5-2).
