Jefferson Hagen / MacEwan Athletics
LEDUC – After losing a heartbreaker in their opening match at the Canadian Colleges Athletic Association curling championship at the Leduc Rec Centre, the MacEwan Griffins have been the ones breaking hearts.
Since NAIT rallied to beat them 6-5 on Saturday afternoon, the Griffins haven't lost, stretching their winning streak to three in a row on Sunday night with a dominant 12-4 victory over Fleming College to grab a share of the tournament lead through two days.
The Griffins' rink of skip Ashton Simard, third Erin Wells, second Andie Kurjata, lead Sara Fraser and alternate Hilary Charlie is tied with NAIT and Fanshawe at 3-1, while Niagara, Camosun and Red Deer College are knotted for the fourth and final playoff spot at 2-2. Holland College is on life support at 1-3, while Fleming (0-4) was all but eliminated from playoff contention after the loss to MacEwan.
"Coming in, top four make playoffs, so … getting that third win is huge," said Simard. "Hopefully we can get another one tomorrow and be safe so we don't have pressure games going forward."
The Chauvin, AB product led the Griffins to a 7-6 win over Niagara in the morning draw on Sunday. MacEwan trailed 4-1 early and were down 6-5 heading into the 10th and final end with the hammer.
"We were down one coming home. We had opportunities during the game; we just couldn't really capitalize on it," said Simard. "We were lying two and (Niagara skip Chelsea Brandwood) missed her draw, so I didn't have to throw my last."
The evening draw on Sunday wasn't as much of a barn-burner, even though the Griffins found themselves tied 4-4 with Fleming through six ends. That was until MacEwan dominated a debris-filled house in the seventh and, even though Simard missed a draw for four, they scored three to take control of the match.
Fleming attempted to rally in the next two ends by putting a lot of guards in play, but the Griffins outshot them down the stretch. Especially key was the work of Wells, who had an incredible takeout hit and roll into the four foot behind a bevy of rocks at the front of the house in the ninth to force Fleming into a precise draw to the button that they failed to execute.
"That was the bonus," said Griffins coach Tom Kitagawa. "It wasn't what was called, but when it ended up there, I thought 'wow, now we've got you' because we were behind so many rocks. Being up four, it didn't really matter at that point whether or not we scored any more."
But it did seal the handshake line an end early and put the Griffins into a solid spot moving into the final three draws. On Monday, they will go against Camosun (2-2) at 1 p.m. and Red Deer College (2-2) at 9 p.m., the latter which will be a rematch of the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference final, won by the Queens.
There isn't really a magic number other than one more win will almost certainly at least get them into a tiebreaker, if not into the playoffs outright, but the goal is to just keep going for broke and possibly mine five or six wins out of the round-robin.
"Just the top four teams qualify, so you've just got to keep playing and winning," said Kitagawa.
"You cannot take your foot off the gas. You've got to just keep chugging along."
That's been a solid pace so far. MacEwan has the top overall shooting percentage of any team in the competition (73 per cent), led by Kurjata, who is boasting a 76 per cent mark – second-best among all seconds in the competition. Simard (70 per cent) is tops amongst skips, Wells (71 per cent) is tied for the top third, and Fraser (74 per cent) is second-best among leads who've played all four matches at the position.
"So far (the percentages have) been good," said Simard. "We're pretty consistent. We haven't really had too bad of games, so as long as we keep them high and keep making shots …"
Added Kitagawa: "Generally speaking, every game we've played really well. They've thrown the rocks really well. They've gotten better as the competition has gone on."
