 Switzerland's Xenia Schwaller (Photo: Grand Slam of Curling) defeated Ontario's Carly Howard 9-2 to grab a 2-0 record at the Stu Sells Toronto Tankard at the High Park Club. By Connor Simms, #9 World-Ranked Xenia Schwaller with Selina Gafner at third, Fabienne Rieder and Selina Rychiger on the front end, is on fire this season. They currently have two event wins, at the AMJ Campbell Shorty Jenkins Classic and the Oslo Cup. They hold a 19-4 record, with losses in the quarterfinals of the AMJ Masters last week and the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard earlier this month. This week, they are at the Stu Sells Toronto Tankard. Last season at this event, they went 4-2, losing the semi-finals to Eunjung Kim, who went on to win the event. This season, a new format has been introduced for this event. There will be six pools of four teams. After round-robin play within each pool, teams will advance to placement games. Teams ranked 1-8 will compete for a spot in the quarterfinals, while teams 9-16 will also compete. The losers of the 9-16 placement games will be eliminated, and the winners will face the losers of the 1-8 placement games to complete the playoff bracket. From there, a standard single-elimination playoff bracket will follow. In their second game, they took on Ontario's Carly Howard. Howard won the opening draw to the button for the hammer. After a blank first end, Schwaller stole three points in the second end for an early lead, then forced Howard to a single in the third. Schwaller added a steal in the fourth end, followed by scoring three in the fifth. They then added another steal of three in the sixth end to defeat Howard 9-2. In Schwaller's opening game, they defeated Japan's Momoha Tabata 7-3. In their final round robin game, they will face Ontario's Hailey Armstrong at 11:15 am Eastern Time on Saturday. Catch all of the action live on the CurlingZone YouTube page. Also, find linescores on the CurlingZone website. |
A five at the opening end of their first-ever match together in a major international competition sent Katie McMillan and Angus Bryce on their way to a dominant victory over the USA at the ACE & Company World Mixed Doubles Championships in Geneva.
