The Kathy Piper rink crossed the finish line for their fifth President’s Cup in five years after completing a marathon journey in the St. Albert Curling Club playoffs.
“It was survival of the fittest,” said Nicole Bellamy, the tired-looking third for the Piper foursome, following the team’s third game in a row Sunday. “We started at four o’clock and it’s now midnight so it was a hard road we travelled. We even curled 25 ends [Saturday] so it was a similar day too.”
In the tiebreaker playoff against Cathy Lane, Piper rallied from a 5-4 deficit with three in five and then stole one in six to win 8-5.
“It was our ability to get deuces [in the first and third ends] that helped put us on top,” Bellamy said. “We did give up that one big end [four by Lane in two] and they got quite confident with that. Maybe that was our opportunity to get really focused. Sometimes when a team gets up on the board that security makes you change your play.”
In the seventh end, both teams had difficulty declaring who was shot rock. The yellow and black stones were practically welded together on the button.
“We couldn’t measure it. It was so tight. I personally thought it was yellow [Piper]. We asked a member [Jamie King, who was curling two sheets away in the men’s club final] and he said, ‘You know what? I don’t want to be biased but I’m thinking yellow.’ The third [for Lane, Teri Tralnberg] said I’m not going to give yellow so I said that seeing this in the Brier I know that an official would say it’s a blanked end. It gave them the hammer [in eight], which wasn’t a big advantage because you’re in a position where you have to get three and that’s difficult,” Bellamy said.
Piper eventually ran Lane out of rocks in the last end. With Lane poised to count three, Piper removed two of them.
“Our skip missed her first rock but she came back with a double, which was tremendous. She just got back in the hack, got focused and made it. It was great,” Bellamy said.
The entertaining contest was the third tilt in the club playoffs between the top two Wednesday league rinks. Lane sent Piper into the B bracket with a victory in Saturday’s A semifinals.
“They took a strong lead in the beginning,” Bellamy said. “We were able to shake that loss off and get right back into it.”
The next game for Piper was a wacky 13-12 extra-end verdict against Bev Merryweather.
“It was a fun game. They were a great team to curl against,” Bellamy said. “There was a missed shot here, a missed shot there. You could take four and end up giving four. It was so friendly like that. We just wanted to keep on playing.”
Piper closed out Saturday’s tripleheader with her second playoff win against Jeanie Murch and her first game Sunday ended in victory against Betty Fenton in the B final.
Next up was the A-B final against Lane’s line-up of Tralnberg, Nicole Lane (throwing third rocks) and Deb McLennan. After a steal of one by Piper in four put her team ahead 3-2, Lane replied with one in five. The sixth end was blanked and in seven Piper counted two, en route to the 7-3 win.
In the sudden-death playoff, Piper’s gang picked up where they left off the game before. They also dodged a bullet in seven, when Lane misfired her last shot while gunning for a big end to retake the lead.
“We really had our draw weight and we knew we had to get them to hit. We started off the game [Saturday] hitting more and we weren’t really comfortable with that. That’s why we changed to the draw game to make them hit,” Bellamy said.
Six games in three days, with the last five do-or-die, was taxing at times for Piper’s team, featuring Alison Howes and Laurie Schreiner at front end. Lauren Jenkyns, the team’s sub, curled in place of Howes in the B final and the A-B final.
“The draw hasn’t been quite this difficult but we’ve been here before so we know the ropes,” Bellamy said. “There wasn’t a lot of break between the games. I know the teams were ready to get out there and we tried to take as much time as we could and stay hydrated and get some nourishment.”
The club championship was the fifth in a row for Piper, Bellamy and Schreiner and the first for Howes in the women’s division. The all-star third with Doug McLennan’s four-time reigning mixed club champions hooked up with the 2010 Tournament of Champions winners this winter.
“Overall we’ve just been so solid,” Bellamy said. “We’ve had some struggles this year, where in the past we haven’t had those struggles. We’re curling less this year and that makes it pretty hard. We haven’t had a practice and most of us are just curling one day a week and that’s been a bit different.”
They will close out the season at the Dominion northern playdowns this weekend at the Ottewell, followed by the April 4 to 7 Edmonton and area club playdowns at the Crestwood. Last year’s Tournament of Champions triumph was the second by a St. Albert women’s rink since Cathy Borst captured the inaugural crown in 1993. With Christina Monk as the skip, St. Albert’s club champions were finalists in 2009 and semifinalists the previous two years.
“We have a good feeling about our chances coming off these playoff wins,” Bellamy said.
