If you're thinking to yourself that it's a bit early for Kerry Galusha and her rink to be hitting the cash-spiel circuit, you'd be right.
But they're ready to roll and they hit the ground running in Edmonton last weekend for the first of what's set to be a busy schedule this season.
Galusha and her rink of Sarah Koltun, Shona Barbour and Brittany Tran – the new addition to the squad – were in action at the Avonair Cash Spiel in Alberta's capital and ended up getting to the quarter-final of the triple-knockout tournament before losing their third game to Selena Sturmay of Edmonton, 6-4, this past Sunday.
“It's earlier than normal but we felt Edmonton would be a good first one to play,” said Galusha.
Galusha started out against Ashton Simard of Alberta in the A pool but ended up on the wrong end of a 7-6 decision, which meant they dropped to the B pool. They ended up winning two in a row to get to one of the B pool finals, which would have meant an automatic spot in the quarter-final, but they fell to Krysta Hilker of Alberta in that match-up.
They had one more chance in the C pool and they managed to get into the final eight by beating Lindsey Makichuk, 8-6, to claim a spot in the pay-window bracket.
“Even in our losses, we had chances to win,” said Galusha. “It seemed like we would have a bad game, then a good game, then a bad one. Execution was the big thing for us but we didn't want to get too down on ourselves. We were really happy to qualify for the quarters.”
Galusha and Sturmay traded points in the opening two ends of the quarter-final before Sturmay put up a deuce in the third end and stole another in the fourth to take a 4-1 lead. They traded points again in the fifth and sixth ends before Galusha scored a deuce of her own in the seventh end to narrow the gap to 5-4.
Galusha had the eighth end set up for a potential steal, forcing Sturmay to hit and stick her final rock against three Galusha rocks, which she did to win and advance to the semifinal.
Even in defeat, Galusha said she's happy with how things turned out.
“We've already played six games this year, which is really good,” she said. “Sarah and I had some things to build on from last season but I think we're comfortable with each other now.”
There was no rest for the weary as the ladies flew out to Toronto right after Edmonton to play in the StuSells Toronto Tankard, which starts today. Galusha and company are in a pool with two teams from Ontario, one from Nova Scotia and one from China.
Before the Toronto spiel got going, the rink got in some practice time with their coach, John Epping, to work out some kinks in their game.
“We knew what needed to be worked on and we're hoping to get better,” said Galusha. “We're hoping to build on Edmonton and try to go two-and-two and have a good shootout score and hopefully sneak into the quarter-finals.”
Galusha will be in action this morning at 9 a.m. when she takes on Jie Mei of China in her first contest.