You know those times where you look back at one game and think to yourself had you won it, things could have gone differently?
Sharon Cormier had a moment sort of like that at the Canadian Seniors Curling Championships in Stratford, Ont., which wrapped up on March 29. Cormier and her rink of Debbie Moss, Heather Bilodeau and Cheryl Tordoff were on the verge of making the championship round on the womens side, but missed out on a tiebreaker.
Feb. 20/17
The ladies ended up tied for the fourth and final championship round spot with Alberta and Quebec as all three teams had identical records of two wins and four losses. Cormier played Quebec in their final game of the round-robin knowing a win would see her through as she had defeated Alberta earlier in the event and had the head-to-head tiebreaker sewn up in that regard.
Cormier lost to Quebec, 6-3.
“It was the last game and it was make-or-break,” she said.
The way the tiebreaker was done was through draws to the button and Quebec's draws were better than both Alberta's and the NWT's, meaning they went through to the championship round.
But Cormier said there were other games where they could have won and not have had the game against Quebec be the deciding factor.
“New Brunswick was our first game of the week and we had a close one with them,” she said. “Saskatchewan was another game where we were close.”
Saskatchewan, skipped by Sherry Anderson, went on to win the championship and earned the right to represent Canada at the World Senior Curling Championships in April 2019.
After missing out on the championship round, Cormier and her rink went into the seeding pool to determine their final placing. They won two of their three games, beating Nunavut and Prince Edward Island and very nearly made it three wins, but lost to Manitoba, 8-4.
“We were actually tied, 4-4, coming home in the last end without the hammer,” she said. “We decided to go for it, but it didn't work and Manitoba ended up having a big last end. But, we finished up strong and I'm really pleased with how we played that week.”
The event was played on arena ice, which is much different than curling club ice in a few ways. Cormier, who's played at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts on numerous occasions, is used to arena ice and knew exactly how it would play.
“It's usually faster than club ice and there's more swing,” she said. “You have to throw a truer rock with more rotation or you'll end up losing the handle.”
When it comes to the seniors, the format typically sees half the action in a curling club and half in an arena, which was the set-up when Yellowknife hosted the event in 2014, because there's mens and womens games at the same time, but it was all on arena ice this time.
“I was told I looked really comfortable,” said Cormier. “The rinks were different, though. One was much colder than the other and that meant rocks on the colder ice ran faster than the other rink.”
The mens rink of Glen Hudy, Brian Kelln, Franz Dziuba and Richard Klakowich were in almost the same boat as the women in that they, too, finished with a record of two wins and four losses but no tiebreak was needed to determine the fourth spot in the championship round. They went on to the seeding round, where they managed to beat Nunavut in their final game to end on a winning note.