Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
RED DEER – MacEwan's storied curling program is going out in style.
Playing in the final event in program history, the Griffins mixed rink captured an ACAC Championship with a 6-2 victory over NAIT Sunday afternoon.
"It's huge," said head coach Tom Kitagawa. "The program's ending and this is the last chance for most of these players, so this is a big deal. Out of the six players who went, only one has been to a provincial championship before, so it's a huge thrill for them to win gold."
Skip Rebecca Bartz, third Brandt Holt, second Brennin Turner, lead Zale Zabolotniuk and alternates Rachael Hansen and Joel MacDonald earned the seventh mixed title in program history, following wins in 1992, 1996, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2018.
"It was awesome, to say the least," said Bartz. "We just stuck together. We got down in a few games, but we just really relied on our teammates to get through and never let ourselves get down, just stayed positive. We always communicated. We couldn't be more excited to win the last ACAC banner for MacEwan curling for now."
It's the 16th banner in the program's illustrious ACAC history as MacEwan has six women's titles (1993, 2005, 2010, 2014, 2016, 2019) and three men's (1990, 2005, 2015) championships.
"That thought crossed my mind about the history the program's had at MacEwan and all the things we've been able to accomplish," said Kitagawa. "To me, that's huge. I carry a lot of great memories from ACAC and all the friendships I've made with the coaches and the players from different institutions."
Playing lead for a round-robin game against UAlberta-Augustana on Saturday, Joel MacDonald sweeps a rock into the house under the watchful eye of skip Rebecca Bartz and second Brennin Turner (RDC Athletics photo).
Bartz has personally had a hand in three of MacEwan's ACAC curling championships and has conference medals in four-consecutive years. She won bronze with the mixed rink in 2017 before rattling off gold with the 2018 mixed champs, MacEwan's 2018 women's champs and then this year.
"It's pretty fantastic," she said. "I mentioned it to my dad, 'well, I guess I'm always on the right team at the right time.' The years build on one another and you just build experience. It's pretty cool to be able to put that on your resume at the end – four provincials for ACAC and take a medal home each time."
Bartz and her teammates combined to outplay NAIT in Sunday's final, beating them for the third time of the weekend after round-robin and 1-2 page playoff wins over their Avonair Curling Club rinkmates.
"The team, generally speaking, we outshot our opposition by 15 percentage points," said Kitagawa. "Our team average was 60.66 and theirs was 45.9. Overall, we had a much better game. Everybody performed better."
After a blank first end, MacEwan scored two in the second, but NAIT clawed back to tie with one in each of the third and fourth ends.
"From that point, we kind of took the game over – took one in five, stole two in six, stole one in seven and then we ran them out of rocks in the last end," said Kitagawa.
Sweepers Zale Zabolotniuk, left, and Brandt Holt get ready to escort Rachael Hansen's shot down the ice in one of MacEwan's games over the weekend (RDC Athletics photo).
The Griffins went 2-1 in the round-robin portion of the ACAC Championship, beating NAIT 8-7 on Friday, losing 6-5 in an extra end to Lakeland on Saturday morning and then beating UAlberta-Augustana 9-7. They then won a tiebreaker between three 2-1 teams to get into the 1-2 page playoff game and beat NAIT 6-2 to directly qualify for the final.
NAIT beat Lakeland 13-4 in Sunday morning's semifinal to set up the gold medal match. MacEwan won with a lot of the same characteristics as their 2018 mixed championship team - good communication and stellar shot-making.
"We just worked really well as a team," said Bartz. "We have some newer players who have never been to this level of competition before and they handled themselves very well. You couldn't tell they were nervous in the last game at all if they were. They did what they could and did very well."
To win the final championship in MacEwan's curling history will be a special memory for Bartz and her teammates.
"It's a pretty great feeling," she said. "It's an honour to be able to play for the school and represent them as well as we did."
