Scotties dream ends for Team McCarville

Krista McCarville’s amazing run at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts came to a screeching halt Saturday night in Sault Ste. Marie.

The team from Thunder Bay were dumped unceremoniously from the tournament semifinal by a determined Prince Edward Island squad that piled on five points in the first three ends and went on to a 10-6 victory that earned them a date with defending champion Jennifer Jones in Sunday’s final.

“It’s disappointing, but we’ll learn from it” McCarville said after attempting a miraculous shot for three in the 10th end. Needing a perfect double takeout of two P.E.I. stones at the front of the house, and needing to roll her shooter into the rings, the 27-year old instead rolled her own stone away and left skip Kathy O’Rourke with the game’s only steal and the four-shot win.

“They play us so well. They just never let us back into it. I was confused on a couple of shots that proved costly,” McCarville said. “We’re a young team. We’ll have a lot more shots at this, I’m sure. Every setback at this level teaches you something.”

It was the shooting of Erin Carmody, who throws skip stones in place of O’Rourke, that led the Maritimers to victory on Saturday. Carmody shot an amazing 93 per cent in the semifinal, getting her rink out of several jams in the process.

“Erin was on fires,” O’Rourke said, preparing her team to bring back something no other skip from Canada’s tiniest province has done in the past – a Scotties Tournament of Hearts trophy. “I told her last night that we’d just had a practice game and we’d come back tomorrow and she could do her thing. She said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I’m going to do,’ and she did it tonight.”

O’Rourke was referring to Friday’s 8-5 loss to Jones in the 1-2 page playoff.

Carmody, just 21 years of age, is confident they’ll fare much better in the final against the winner of three of the past five national women’s curling titles.

“I think we can come back against them. I think we were a little nervous (Friday night) and that showed, but we know we can play a lot better. I got great comfort and support from my teammates – they did everything they could to pick me up – and that helped me today,” Carmody told Heart Chart editor Larry Wood.

Her teammates didn’t really need to boost her confidence against McCarville, despite a 9-3 loss to Ontario during the round-robin portion of the annual event, being staged a little earlier this year to avoid conflicts with the upcoming Olympic Games.

Carmody showed perfect draw weight twice in the opening end to score her deuce, and again in the third, when she scored three against the usually unflappable McCarville squad, that also includes Kari MacLean, Ashley Miharija and Tara George.

While P.E.I. was scoring multiple points, McCarville, who curled a below-average 70 per cent, could only manage singles until a double in the sixth, by which time the game was out of reach, down 7-2 before counting the two points.

Ontario pulled to within two in the eighth, but was unable to steal a point in the ninth and trailed 9-6 coming home.