Congratulations to the Lauren Horton rink of the Huntley Curling Club for winning the OCA Bantam Girls title this past weekend at the Land O’ Lakes Curling Club in Tweed. Horton, with third Jordan Mark, second Cassandra Lewin, lead Jessica Armstrong, and coach Tom Sinclair defeated the Brenda Holloway rink from the Tam Heather club in a thrilling extra-end tie-breaker game on Sunday morning, after both teams emerged from round-robin play Saturday evening with identical 6-1 records. The final score in the tie-breaker game was 5-4.
Our own Deanna Johnson, with third Laura Daniel, second Jaime Jones, lead Emily Walsh and coaches Bob Johnson and Steve Jones finished with a 3-4 record, tied for fourth place. Friday afternoon’s draw resulted in the Johnson foursome losing a 5-4 squeaker to Jestyn Murphy of the Mississauga Golf and Country Club. The Johnson rink’s Saturday afternoon game against Ashley McKnight of Exeter was tied 4-4 after five ends. A “nicely swept draw to the 4-foot”, according to coach Bob Johnson, resulted in Deanna salvaging a single point in the sixth, and a steal of one in seven gave the Elmira rink a two-point lead going into the eighth end, where they ran the McKnight rink out of rocks to get to a .500 record at 3-3.
The last draw of the round-robin found the Johnson foursome against Brenda Holloway of Tam Heather, who needed the win to keep up to Lauren Horton and force a tie-breaker game on Sunday. Coach Bob Johnson described this a “great last game” that went to an extra end, with Deanna rolling out with her final shot and giving Holloway a steal of one for a 5-4 win.
Congratulations to all of the teams for a great weekend of competition. All of us at Elmira are very proud of Deanna and her rink – way to go!