The score said it all.
The Royal City Curling Club’s Sarah Daniels rink is the 2016 Tim Hortons B.C. Junior Women’s curling champion, after toppling last year’s champs in an 11-3 win in Kamloops.
The RCCC rink, which includes Daniels, third Marika Van Osch, second Dezaray Hawes and lead Megan Daniels, erased a 1-0 deficit with a barrage of points midway through the final to upset the undefeated hometown rink of Corryn Brown.
“It was very exciting. We knew it would be a tough game so we just wanted to focus on the process, to do what we can to play our best and it all worked out,” said Hawes. “There definitely was some history between our two teams so we knew what we had to do, and that was just play our game.”
That history included a pair of losses to the Brown rink earlier in the week: an 8-3 setback in round robin play and 11-7 in the quarterfinals. That last defeat, which saw Brown rally with five points in the 10th end for the win, proved to be vital experience that came in handy in the end.
In the final showdown, Brown opened with a 1-0 lead after the first end and held it until the fourth when the Daniels rink cashed in five and stole one in the fifth to build a comfortable 6-1 lead. They’d pad the lead with two in the seventh.
Hawes said the challenges during the draw only prepared them for the pressure of the final.
“Mental toughness has been one of our big goals, to improve on,” she said. “I think there are always little hurdles you face but we stayed focused on our gameplan and carried it through.”
The Daniels rink, co-coached by Ernie Daniels and Katie Witt, won its first four games convincingly before crossing paths with Brown in an 8-3 round-robin loss. They rebounded nicely with a convincing 12-4 victory over the Locken rink, then edged Coulombe 7-6 with single points scored in the ninth and 10th ends to come from behind.
That put them on a collision course with Brown in the quarterfinals. Dusting themselves off after the 11-7 defeat, Daniels reclaimed its confidence with a 9-4 semifinal decision over Loken, and a berth to the final.
In that last game, the Royal City foursome were true on 86 per cent of their shots, while Brown finished at 67 per cent. Leading the way was Hawes, who was successful on a magical 96 per cent of her shots.
Team Daniels will travel to Stratford, Ont. Jan. 23 to 31 for the 2016 Canadian junior nationals.
On the junior men’s side, Royal City’s Matthew McCrady rink put up a valiant fight before falling 8-3 to Team Tardi of Langley/Royal City in the Tim Hortons Junior Men’s curling final.
Tied 2-2 midway through the fifth end, Tardi’s team, which includes Burnaby’s Daniel Wenzek, counted two and stole three in the seventh to pull away.
The McCardy rink, which features third Zac Curtis, second Liam Purgavie and lead Jacob Umbach, held up well despite being comprised all of 16 year olds. The quartet advanced to the final after bouncing Paul Henderson’s Victoria rink 8-5. They finished with a 7-3 record.
Both the Daniels and Tardi rinks will have a shot at advancing to the World Junior Curling championships in Erzurum, Turkey, with a win at the Canadians.
