THUNDER BAY – The struggles are real for Krista McCarville and Team Northern Ontario.
A day after eking out a controversial 7-6 win over win-less Nunavut, the Thunder Bay rink jumped out to a 3-0 lead over Sarah Hill's Newfoundland and Labrador foursome, only to have the game stolen away by an upstart team that picked up its second win in five outings, downing McCarville 8-6.
A lot went wrong, the frustrated skip said.
“It's been quite the struggle – a struggle with picking up on the ice and me struggling with my draw weight again. Yeah, it's been a little bit of a struggle for all of us, I think,” said McCarville, still in the thick of things at 3-2, in a two-way tie for third place at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, taking place at Thunder Bay's Fort William Gardens.
The 39-year-old skip acknowledged time is running out, with just three games remaining an only three championship round spots up for grabs coming out of Pool A.
Even those opportunities are starting to dry up.
New Brunswick, skipped by Andrea Crawford, is perfect through five games and Wild Card No. 1, despite losing skip Tracy Fleury to COVID-19 isolation, is 4-1. McCarville and Saskatchewan's Penny Barker are next, at 3-2.
“Honestly, all we're really thinking about it picking up our game. We're not playing like we know how to and we're just struggling out there. If we want to win this thing, if we want to win any more games, we need to pick it up and be back to the Team McCarville that we know how to be. We just have to play better,” McCarville said.
For Hill, it was a matter of staying focused, despite finding themselves in a deep 3-0 hole after the opening end.
“We felt like we knew what the ice was going to do, we felt like we had a good handle on the speed. We just got a little unlucky with a couple of our rocks, just hit a few fresh spots, not throwing quite as strong as we wanted to,” Hill said.
“We knew we could make the shots, it was just a matter of sharpening up for the second end. It was nose to the grindstone, get your two back and it was just a one-point game. After that we just kept grinding it out and playing the way we knew we could to stay in that game.”
McCarville took a 4-2 lead in the third, but after a blank in four, Hill made a double and stuck aroiund to score two, evening the match at four.
Northern Ontario took a 5-4 lead in the sixth, then tied again, gave up a steal of two in the eighth when McCarville came up short on a draw for one. The East Coast squad stole another in the ninth and clogged up the house to ensure their opponent had little chance to get the three they needed to extend the match.
In other afternoon action, Wild Card No. 3 (3-3), skipped by Emma Miskew, made easy work of Nunavut, downing Brigitte MacPhail's team 14-1. Fleury handed two-time champion Chelsea Carey her third loss in five outings, winning 9-4, while Barker scored four in the eighth en route to a 9-6 win over Prince Edward Island's Suzanne Birt.
In the morning draw, the Northwest Territories edged previoiusly unbeaten Manitoba 8-6, Alberta scored an 11-5 win over Yukon and Team Canada's Kerri Einarson ran her record to 5-0 with a 10-5 win over British Columbia (1-4).
McCarville takes on Crawford on Wednesday morning and wraps up her day with Barker in the evening draw.
