McCarville clinches playoff berth

It was really nothing more than a formality, but it was still nice to get it out of the way.

Krista McCarville’s Fort William Curling Club foursome on Thursday afternoon became the first team to clinch a playoff berth at the Ontario Scotties Tournament of Hearts, surviving a mid-game comeback by Peterborough skip Lisa Farnell to win 11-5 and remain unbeaten at 7-0 at the Port Arthur Curling Club event. 

“It’s really nice knowing that we’re in the playoffs now, but we still have two tough games to play and then obviously in the playoffs we’re going to have really tough games. So we’re not really focused on the playoffs until we’re there,” said McCarville, who takes on former provincial champion Jen Hanna in Thursday night’s eighth draw.

Ottawa native Hanna dropped a heartbreaking 7-6 extra-end decision to Sarnia’s Carrie Lindner (5-2), falling to 3-4 and in a fight for her playoff life.

That alone is enough to make Draw 8 an interesting one, and despite Hanna’s slow start, McCarville isn’t taking anything for granted from a team she knows all too well.

“She’s definitely really hungry, and we have a little rivalry going on. She beat me in the 2005 final to go to the Scotties, so of course I always want to beat her because of that. But we always want to win. We want our ‘W’,” McCarville said.

McCarville, who leapt out to a 6-1 lead before the match hit its midway point, said it’s never easy trying to nurse such a large lead against a competitor like Farnell, who like herself is a former provincial junior champion.

“It’s tough to defend when you’re playing great teams. They get one tucked in there and it’s tough. You’ve got to peel because you’re up. It just happened that they kept getting a nice one on the button and a few of our first rocks kept going a little bit deep.

“That’s kind of where we got into a little bit of trouble, but we battled back and we hung in there,” McCarville said.

Playing without the hammer in the first, McCarville stole two when Farnell failed to execute an angle raise.

McCarville, whose team includes lead Ashley Miharija, second Kari MacLean and third Tara George, forced their opponent to take a single in the second, and with the hammer in the third, they began to create some space on the scoreboard.

The Thunder Bay skip was left with a relatively easy draw for two when Farnell failed to make a crucial double takeout with her final stone, and McCarville didn’t disappoint, taking a 4-1 lead.

In the fourth Farnell needed a raise to score one, but crashed off her own stone and instead gave McCarville a steal of two and a 6-1 lead.

“We struggled for the first couple of ends, and with a team that’s that good, once you get down, it’s pretty hard to get back in the game. But we gave it a really good shot. We were set up to steal a couple there. We stole one. We were trying to claw our way back,” said Farnell, making her provincial Scotties debut.

Give Farnell (2-5) and her teammates, lead Ainsley Galbraith, second Kim Brown and third Erin Morrissey, credit for the proverbial college try.

Facing a delicate double takeout in the fifth, Farnell made the shot to close the gap to 6-3, then stole a single in the sixth to creep within two.

The teams traded points in the seventh and eighth, but Farnell’s luck ran out in the ninth. Without the hammer and in need of a draw to the button to avoid disaster, she was unable to combine the necessary speed and line to make the shot and sailed through the house, scoring four for McCarville to end the match.

Three sheets to the right, things finally started looking up for Thunder Bay’s other representatives. Marlo Dahl’s foursome entered the day winless at 0-6, but emerged victorious, thanks in part to a noisy contingent of middle-school students from Nipigon, where Dahl is a teacher. 

“Finally. That was exactly what I said yesterday, that we needed to get a win to get the monkey off our back, just to prove that we are here for a reason,” said Dahl (1-6), who needed an extra end to defeat Thornhill’s Julie Hastings(2-5) by an 8-7 count.

In other action, Sudbury’s Tracy Horgan (5-2) downed Mississauga’s Catherine Auld (4-3) 9-4 to cement her claim on a playoff spot and Alliston’s Jaqueline Harrison improved to 4-3 with a 6-3 win over Cochrane’s Krista Mayrand (2-5).

Horgan takes on Lindner in a second-place battle on Thursday night. Auld plays Maynard, Farnell duels with Hastings and Dahl plays Harrison.