 Vancouver's Clancy Grandy (photo: Andrew Klaver, Curling Canada) will play Montreal's Laurie St-Georges for a Scotties Playoff berth on Friday morning. Grandy and her team of third Kayla MacMillan, second Lindsay Dubue and lead Sarah Loken won 8-6 against Alberta's Kayla Skrlik to claim their spot in the tiebreaker round. Grandy opened by scoring a single, then stole a point in the second end for the early 2-0 lead. Skrlik, and her team of Brittany Tran, Geri-Lynn Ramsay and Ashton Skrlik came into the game with the same 4-3 record as Grandy, scored one in the third end, then stole a point to even the score. After Grandy got one in the fifth end, Skrlik took their own lead with 2 in the sixth end, then took a one point lead again with two in the 9th end. Grandy prevailed in the 10th, scoring three for the 8-6 win and another life in the chase for the Scotties crown. Four teams left for the last two spots in Pool A at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Kamloops, and with all the confusion surrounding tiebreakers for one third-place spot, we end up with two games playing for each with a playoff berth on the line. The top-seeded team will advance as seed 2 from Pool A and play Rachel Homan (seed 3 of Pool B) in this afternoon's 2v3 crossover games. The winner will be guaranteed a spot in the Page 3v4 game and will then play Krista McCarville for a chance to upgrade that spot into the Page 1v2 game on Saturday evening. The second-seeded tiebreaker winner will play Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg in the crossover 2v3 game, with the winner of that game taking on Kerri Einarson for a spot in the Page 1v2 game. Grandy will play St-Georges, who entered last evening's draw at 5-2, dropping a 7-6 decision to Nova Scotia's Christina Black. St-Georges' loss sets up the four-way tie for second place between Grandy, St-Georges, Black and Winnipeg's Kaitlyn Lawes. Grandy enters the game with a 52-28 record, having won twice on the Tour this season with wins at the HearingLife Tour Challenge Tier 2 event and the Curling Stadium Martensville International. St-Georges' season record of 17 wins and 18 losses was a struggle for this young team as players balanced school and work with five Tour events where the team failed to reach the playoffs. St-Georges was part of the Quebec entry skipped by partner Felix Asselin that won the Canadian Mixed Championship in November/ St-Georges and Asselin also played four Mixed Doubles events, reaching the final in all four and winning twice, posting a 24-2 record along the way. |
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.
