SAULT STE. MARIE, February 10…Manitoba, skipped by Kaitlyn Lawes of Winnipeg, captured the women’s title Sunday at the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors with a 7-6 victory over Saskatchewan.
It was the eighth crown for Manitoba since the Canadian championship began in 1971, but the first since 1995, when Kelly Scott (nee MacKenzie) won in Regina. Scott went on to win a world title that year.
Lawes and her Pembina Curling Club foursome of third Jenna Loder, second Liz Peters (daughter of 1992 Brier winner Vic Peters) and lead Sarah Wazney hope to do the same at the 2008 world juniors in Östersund, Sweden, March 1-9.
Ironically, Lawes’s half-sister Andrea was a member of the Canadian women’s championship team skipped by Alison Goring in 1990, who also went to Sweden to try to win a world title, but finished tied for third in getting a bronze medal.
On the keys to winning, the 19-year-old Lawes, a Human Nutritional Sciences student at the University of Manitoba, said, “It was patience. I can’t say that enough. I’m so excited. Our girls stuck together the whole time. They shot the lights out.
“So did the Saskatchewan girls. We just had to stay patient and wait for opportunities. They weren’t going out without a fight. They made a lot of great shots. We knew we were going to get a close game. We got an early lead, but we knew it would be tough to hold it, so we were lucky we were able to keep a couple of points in front.”
Actually, today’s final looked like a blowout early on. After a blanked first end, Manitoba got on the board when Lawes made a beautiful split of her rock in the top of the eight-foot to roll in for three.
After Saskatchewan was unable to blank the third and was forced to take one, Manitoba counted three more in the fourth when Lawes made an open draw.
Saskatchewan didn’t quit though and the McVicar squad from the Nutana Curling Club in Saskatoon started to claw its way back into it. They closed the gap to 6-3 after drawing for two in the fifth, then proceeded to steal singles in the sixth, when Lawes failed on a difficult angle raise, and the seventh ends, when Manitoba overswept Lawes’s last rock draw.
But the ‘Bison’ (or Bisonettes) righted themselves in the eighth end, restoring its two-point lead with a single, although a light draw by Lawes prevented counting a deuce and really putting the game on ice.
Saskatchewan took one in the ninth end, but in the 10th, needing to steal just to force an extra end, McVicar was light with a tap-back and Lawes did not have to throw her final stone.
“No lead is really safe in curling now with the four-rock rule,” continued Lawes. “A couple of misses here and there and teams can get back into it. I just knew we had to keep playing and keep going. It’s awesome. Manitoba hasn’t had a (women’s) title since 1995.
Lawes had been the provincial runner-up to Calleen Neufeld the last two years. Neufeld went on to be second at the last two Canadian Juniors, but Lawes was able to seal the deal for her province today.
“I’m sure he was watching over us, too,” said Lawes, about her late father Keith, who died last November. "We had high expectations (coming in). We knew we could compete with the teams across Canada, if we were on top of our game the entire week and luckily we were. It’s going to be awesome (going to Sweden). Never been there before.”
Manitoba finished first in the round robin with a 10-2 record, earning a bye to the final, while Saskatchewan wound up in a three-way tie for third at 8-4, before winning two tiebreakers and the semi-final over Nova Scotia on Saturday.
Said 18-year-old McVicar, “We had three really good games yesterday. It set us up perfectly (for today). We just missed a bit early on but we’re fighters. We missed a little bit of execution and we knew we were playing a great team. We knew we had to step it up against them and we didn’t quite do it.”
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