(By Allen Cameron, Calgary Herald)

 

Skip Brad Gushue will lose long-time third Mark Nichols, left, at the end of this season. “I just need to take a break,” said Nichols.

CHARLOTTETOWN-On the eve of the Tim Hortons Brier, one of curling’s most enduring back-end partnerships will split up after this season.

Mark Nichols has told Brad Gushue and the rest of his Newfoundland teammates he will be leaving the quartet at the end of this season, ending a 13-year partnership with Gushue that produced an Olympic gold medal, a world junior championship and a runner-up finish at the 2007 Brier.

The two will play their final Brier together – for the foreseeable future, anyway; this is, after all, curling, and breakups are never permanent – beginning Saturday at the John Labatt Centre in London, Ont.

“I guess it’s been something I’ve thought about for a little while now,” said Nichols, 31. “We put so much time into the game, and I think right now, where I am in my life, I just need to take a break from the competitive side of the game, spend some time focusing on family (including his longtime girlfriend Colette Lemon), career and trying to make a living instead of travelling for 10, 11, 12 weeks of the year and putting everything else off.

“I still think I can compete at the top level, so that makes it hard. But I need to recharge the batteries. Who knows how long I’m going to be away? We’ll take it one step at a time.”

Nichols had thought about making the same decision prior to this season, but Gushue talked him out of it, hoping his competitive fires would be stoked playing on a team with Randy Ferbey calling the shots, along with regular front-ender Ryan Fry.

That, as has been well-chronicled recently, didn’t go so well, and while the team rallied to win the Newfoundland title with lead Jamie Danbrook, Nichols knew early on this season it would be his last at the elite level for a while. And so, for that matter, did Gushue.

“It was no surprise,” said Gushue, who will be the last holdover from the 2006 Olympic gold-medal team. “Throughout the year, you could just tell that his heart really wasn’t into it as much as he would probably want. Last year, he was thinking about taking a year off, and we convinced him to play one more year and see if he could get that drive back. And it just didn’t happen.”

Click for full story in the Calgary Herald.

Follow Allen Cameron on Twitter/AllenCameronCH

Was it the spirit of Sandra Schmirler? Was it Saskatchewan Roughrider pride that pervades everything to do with sports in the Wheat Province?

Sooner or later, the kinds of energy associated with these green kinds of things had to be taken into consideration at the Scotties Tournament Of Hearts.

 
Team Saskatchewan wins the 2011 Scotties Tournament of Hearts(Photo by: Andrew Klaver)

And it turned from consideration to happening Sunday night at the Charlottetown Civic Centre when Amber Holland of Saskatchewan stunned defending Scotties champion Jennifer Jones of Winnipeg 8-7 in the event’s championship final.

There was a bundle of honours at stake for the Jones team — a record-tying four- straight title skein for skip Jones, plus numerous elevations for the remainder of the team.

None of them were realized.

And a large group of green clad fans who accompanied their team were boisterous in celebration when Jones’s last rock double-raise attempted resulted in a spinout that left Saskatchewan counting the winning boulder.

“It isn’t the end of the world and the sun is coming up tomorrow,” said Jones, the deposed four-time champion who won Scotties titles in 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

“We had a great game today and so much fun all week. Our team stuck together. I don’t think we would have had any more fun this week. Winning would have been nice but we’re pretty happy with how we did.” Holland’s Saskatchewan team from Kronau, near Regina, dominated the round-robin preliminary and were the strongest team on the week but suffered a glitch heading into the playoffs.

They lost the last game of the round- robin, then the Page One-Two playoff to Jones before rebounding to win the semi- final against Ontario and earn another crack at Jones in the Sunday night final.

“It was a long event so we prepared a little differently, we just tried to make sure we had the energy to get through it,” said a jubilant but controlled Holland after- ward.

“We worked hard on our performance and on our mental training and make sure we had the ability to stay focused like we needed to and think about what it would be like to wear the maple leaf.”

And wear it the Saskatchewan team will, at Esbjerg, Denmark, March 18-27 The match, in which Jones got off to an early 3-0 advantage in the first end, wound up tied playing the final exchange with the defender in control of the hammer.

It appeared Jones required an out-turn chip shot with her lst rock but she instead attempted a double-raise with the in-turn and didn’t bet all the angles correctly.

“When Jennifer threw the last rock,” said Saskatchewan vice-skip Kim Schneider, who had enjoyed an immense shooting performance like all of her teammates, “I was just holding my breath and all we could do was hope . . . and when it made contact I was screaming at Amber to sweep the rock. “We closed that out-turn off to make her play that shot. We thought she would play a softer weight and tap it. It ran a little straigher, didn’t come up and rolled off.”

Saskatchewan recovered with two in the second but couldn’t pull even until the sixth exchange when Jones ignored two enemy stones in counting positions and attempted an out-turn bury but left it open and Holland stuck for three.

After that it was a tight-fit until the last exchange when Saskatchewan manufactured the only theft of the contest.

“We decided to throw (the last one) hard and we hit it pretty much where we wanted to,” said Jones. “I could have hit a quarter-of-an-inch more but you know that’s curling and that’s what makes it so exciting. And they (Saskatchewan) played great today.

“It’s been a great ride but we have all sorts of events still to come and I think it’s just the beginning for this team”

Click for full story at the Canadian Curling Association’s website.

They came, curled, conquered and in the process, dethroned a three-time queen.

 Amber Holland’s Team Saskatchewan rink upset pre-tourney favourites Jennifer Jones’ Team Canada 8-7 before a crowd of 2,828 at the Charlottetown Civic Centre Sunday.

The win kept Jones, winner of the three last Scotties, from joining the ranks of Nova Scotia’s Colleen Jones, the only team to ring up four straight wins of the tournament.

 Bolstered by scores of green fanatic fans who made the trek from Saskatchewan and a decidedly pro-Holland crowd, the new champs battled back from 3-0 and 6-3 deficits for a thrilling victory.

But Holland wasn’t the only winner to coming out of the tournament, which brought top-notch curling to Charlottetown for Islanders and fans of all 12 competing teams to enjoy.

Phyllis Stretch was one of many Islanders who took in some of the matches.

“They (the crowd) were wild. It was really, the house was just a rockin,” said Stretch, while waiting for Sunday’s championship game.

Being at the Scotties when the tournament was hosted by Charlottetown in 1999, Stretch said this year’s event was just as memorable.

“Watching them (the curlers) on TV, you see the game shot by shot. But to really see them on the ice, it’s great.”

Kelly Murphy of the Canadian Curling Association has spent the past 11 months building up the event by finding sponsors and brewing enthusiasm among Islanders.

With the week now at an end, Murphy declared the tournament a success.

“There were lots of good times and good curling. Everyone rocked,” she said.

Click for full story in today’s Guardian.

(by Al Cameron)

CHARLOTTETOWN — There is no question that Amber Holland raised some eyebrows here seven days ago with the following pronouncement.
She’d just been asked if a desire to be included in the group of female skips considered “elite” in Canada was serving as a motivating factor for her at the Scotties.
“I probably consider myself among the best in the country,” said Holland at the time. “I’ve been playing this game for too long, I’ve been skipping for a lot of years, and I’ve played all of these teams and had success against these teams — just maybe not in this venue. But I consider myself among the elite already.”
Now, everybody should have the same opinion. If there were doubts before about whether she belonged in the discussion, there should be none now thanks to a gutsy performance in the Scotties final tonight against Jennifer Jones.
Lost in the shuffle of the drama of the 10th end, when Jones’s last rock angle-raise takeout failed to curl enough to give Saskatchewan the stolen victory, was the road Holland, Kim Schneider, Tammy Schneider and Heather Kalenchuk had to travel to make Jones have to throw the last rock in the 10th end.
Remember the first end? Holland could have taken the safe route back in the first by making an open hit with her last rock to concede a deuce to Team Canada. Instead, she decided to play a nervy freeze to a Canadian rock buried behind a corner guard. She was a foot heavy and bounced into the open, giving Jones an open hit for three.
That would have crushed plenty of teams out there. Not Saskatchewan.
Holland executed what has to be considered the best clutch shot she’s ever made — with all due respect to her double takeout that won her a Players’ Championship a few years ago — when she made a back-12 weight tap to score three and tie the game in the sixth end. And while that was a terrific shot, it should be noted, too, that Jones had a chance to kill the end by leaving her last-rock draw a foot or two shorter, at the top of the button. Typical of her night, which ended with a 68 per cent shooting percentage, the refinement we’ve come to expect from Jones when it comes to skip rocks was missing, and it let Holland off the hook.
The same can be said about Jones’s first rock in the 10th end, when she had a fairly open hit on Holland’s stone at the top four. If she nose-hits the rock, Holland loses. Instead, Jones’s rock drifted wide and rolled to the side, leaving Holland the same path to the button she had with her first rock. And this time, she dead-buried it.
Click  for full story in the Calgary Herald.

(CCA) Charlottetown, PEI – Team Saskatchewan is the new 2011 Team Canada with an exciting come from behind win against Jennifer Jones who was poised to win her fourth consecutive Canadian Women’s Championship, tying the legendary Colleen Jones record. This is the first time that Saskatchewan has won the title since Sandra Schmirler.
 
Skip Amber Holland was fittingly declared winner of the Sandra Schmirler MVP Award during the closing ceremonies at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Charlottetown. The Award is named in honour of the late Saskatchewan skip who won three Canadian and World titles and the Gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics. It recognizes outstanding play during the playoffs at the Scotties.

Amber Holland. Photograph by Andrew Klaver.
 
The Shot of the Week Award was also presented. This Award goes to the curler judged to have made the most outstanding shot during the entire championship. This year’s winner was Saskatchewan skip Amber Holland. The shot happened in the 6th end of today’s final game between Saskatchewan and Team Canada. Saskatchewan was trailing by a score of 6-3 with last stone. With her last rock, Amber squeezed around a front guard and tap backed her rock to take 3 and tie the game 6-6.
 
First and second All Star teams were announced earlier with Team Canada claiming all of the spots on the First Team. The teams were selected based solely on their statistics during round robin play. Leading the stats on the First All Star team was lead Dawn Askin (90%), second Jill Officer (84%), third Kaitlyn Lawes (81%) and Jennifer Jones at skip (83%). 
 
The Second All Star team included three Saskatchewan team members; Amber Holland at skip (79%), Kim Schneider at third (80%) and Tammy Schneider at second (83%). At lead, was Alberta’s Chelsea Bell (86%).
 
The Joan Mead Builder’s Award went to Canadian Curling Association, National Team Coach, Elaine Dagg-Jackson. This Award recognizes significant contribution to the growth and development of women’s curling in Canada. The Award is named in honour of the late Joan Mead, a CBC producer who is credited with many ground-breaking advances in televised coverage of the sport.
 
The Marj Mitchell Sportsmanship Award was presented to popular Manitoba Skip Cathy Overton-Clapham. This cherished Award is selected by the curlers themselves and is named in honour of the late Saskatchewan skip who won the first women’s World title in 1983. This is the first time a Manitoba curler has captured the Award.
Team Saskatchewan will represent Canada at the Capital One World Women’s Curling Championship in Esbjerg, Denmark, March 18 – 27.

A story by Larry Wood in today’s HeartChart Daily at the Scotties reports that attendance at this year’s Scotties should surpass the attendance in 1999, when the event was last held in Charlottetown. Host committee chair Kim Dolan reports that the event has “been pretty successful at all levels”.
Click to download today’s HeartChart Daily. (PDF)

During Saturday night’s Scotties semi-final, the Sandra Schmirler Foundation presented a cheque for $110,996  to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). $60,996 was raised on Sandra Schmirler Day at the Scotties, and the Foundation donated $50K.

Photo: QEH Neonatal ICU

Here is PEICurling.com’s photo gallery of the 2011 Scotties semi-final between Team Saskatchewan (Amber Holland) and Team Ontario (Rachel Homan), won by Holland. Also in the album are photos from the team autograph session, fifth end break wheelchair and vision impaired curling demos, and the presentation of the cheque from Sandra Schmirler day.

Click to view.