Fordyce earns second national Travelers title

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This article was published 27/11/2017 (3111 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Stacey Fordyce is bringing another national championship banner back to the Brandon Curling Club.

The 32-year-old skip, third Christy Erickson, second Stacey Irwin and lead Pam Gouldie scored deuces in the first, second and fourth ends before a steal of five in the fifth cemented an 11-3 victory over Alberta’s Nanette Dupont in the Travelers women’s final Saturday in Kingston, Ont.

“We were hoping for this result but tried not to put too much pressure on ourselves this week and just wanted to curl our best,” Fordyce said. “We struggled and were a little bit slow to start but just kind of got better and better and were playing our absolute best by the end of the week.”

Fordyce and company also won the 2013 edition in Thunder Bay, Ont., then known as the Dominion Curling Club Championship, with a 6-4 triumph over Heather Burnett of Saskatchewan.

Four years ago they went 6-0 in pool play before two playoff wins. The team, minus Erickson, also reached the semis in its debut in 2010.

“This is so special, it doesn’t feel any different than the first time,” Fordyce added. “In fact, it might even feel a little bit better to know that we can come back here and still compete at this level, especially having the struggles to get out of Manitoba and know that our province is that strong and to come and be able to do it again it’s incredible.

“It’s even hard to put it into words, it’s so special and it means a lot to us.”

This year, Manitoba went 5-1 in pool play, with its only loss, 7-3, courtesy of four in the final end by New Brunswick. Manitoba knocked off Nova Scotia 8-1 in the semifinals on Friday before trouncing Alberta.

“We’ve worked hard to get back the last few years and lost a lot of (provincial) finals, so being back here was amazing, and then knowing the level of competition has gotten even stronger,” Gouldie said. “To know that we can still compete at that level and come together as a team and peak the way we did towards the end of the week made it feel great.”

Although the five stolen points in the fifth — the result of Dupont being heavy on a draw — stick out on the scoreboard, Fordyce believes her team’s strong start keyed the victory.

“The first end was out of our comfort zone with guards in play right off the bat. We didn’t really get a chance to get a feel for the ice and they made some nice shots,” Fordyce said. “I ended up having a nose runback for two in the first end and we made it. That felt pretty good and set things up from there.

“The four-point lead, to get that early was great but it’s sometimes hard to hold onto.”

Nonetheless, the result of the fifth end made the skipper breathe a lot easier with a nine-point lead.

“I didn’t see it coming. (Rocks) were laying around the 12 foot and by the time I was throwing my last one I was just hitting and sticking to lay five,” Fordyce said.

The victory for Manitoba was its record fourth Travelers championship and the second straight as Tracy Andries of Winnipeg used a four-ender in the eighth to best Alberta’s Morgan Muise 8-5 in last year’s final in Kelowna, B.C.

Unfortunately, the Manitoba men were unable to complete the golden double.

Skip Mark Anderson, third Jeremy Short, second Bryce Granger and Riley Willows of the Riverview club surrendered five in the third end and were unable to mount a comeback against sharp-shooting Bart Sawyer and British Columbia, falling 7-3 in the final.

“He was on fire,” Anderson said of Sawyer. “He deserved to win, he had a great game. He was the first guy that called a strategy that was almost a mirror image to how we were playing all week.”

After blanking the first end, Anderson’s draw to the button in two came up way short and he settled for a single.

Another woefully short shot on a freeze attempt with his final stone in three left B.C. sitting four. Sawyer tried a split for six and missed but still raised one in for five.

“We had two bad ends the whole week we played but that one killed us,” Anderson said. “We just got caught on a little bit of stiffer ice outside of the greasy patch and we came up light on it when we were trying to freeze to save the end.”

Sawyer made a double with his last in four to force a blank and he forced Anderson to play a tough double facing four in the fifth end. Anderson made it for a single to make it 5-2, but the B.C. skip responded with a deuce in six, papering a centre-line guard to bump out the Manitoba shot stone.

Manitoba hit for one in seven before accepting defeat, but it was still a great week at the Cataraqui Golf and Country Club for the Riverview foursome.

“When we put it into perspective we got talking after and we went on a 22-2 run from the time we left our club through regionals to provincials to the Canadians, so when that sunk in we realized what we had accomplished,” Anderson said.

His team also returned with a grant worth $3,000 for Riverview after raising the second most amount of money through a fundraising challenge in support of Canadian youth curling.

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