Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
RED DEER – After a huge day of competition on Saturday at the ACAC Curling Championship, the MacEwan Griffins mixed rink earned the right to play for gold medals, a trophy and a banner on Sunday afternoon.
MacEwan's mixed team of skip Rebecca Bartz, third Brandt Holt, second Brennin Turner, lead Zale Zabolotniuk and alternates Rachael Hansen and Joel MacDonald defeated the NAIT Ooks 6-2 in Saturday night's 1-2 page playoff to earn a direct spot into Sunday's championship final (2 p.m. vs. the winner of the 10 a.m. semifinal between NAIT and Lakeland).
MacEwan will be aiming for a second mixed banner in three years after last winning it in 2018.
"The important thing is we always seemed to make the shot when it meant the most or we had to make it," said MacEwan head coach Tom Kitagawa of the 1-2 page playoff win over NAIT, which ended after seven ends.
NAIT went up 2-0 after two ends in the contest, but it was all MacEwan after that, especially when they seized the momentum in the fourth end with a steal to tie it, before pulling off steals of one in the fifth and sixth ends, and steal of two in the seventh to put it away.
"Although the overall stats of our team are lower than what you see on television, we outshot our opponents at every position except third," noted Kitagawa of MacDonald, who outshot the NAIT lead by 30 per cent, Turner who was 12.5 per cent more accurate than her counterpart at second and Bartz, who made 8 per cent more shots than NAIT's skip.
Earlier on Saturday, the Griffins completed the round-robin portion of the contest at 2-1 after a 6-5 extra end loss to Lakeland and a 9-7 win over UAlberta-Augustana to go with their 8-7 win over NAIT on Friday.
Both NAIT and Lakeland also finished 2-1, meaning each player on the tied teams threw a draw to the button and the lowest total cumulative distance (on best three of four) determined placing. MacEwan had 69 inches to NAIT's 75, while Lakeland was third behind that.
MacEwan's curling program, which will be discontinued after this season, has 15 ACAC Championships in its history – six mixed (1992, 1996, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2018), six women's (1993, 2005, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2019) and three men's (1990, 2005, 2015).
