So that’s why Suzanne Birt wears a jacket.
The P.E.I. skip is among a rare breed of the curlers at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts this week at the Civic Centre, one of the few opting to keep an extra layer on while most have stripped down to their dress shirts because of the extra warmth created at ice level by the extra lighting trucked in by TSN.
The 29-year-old must have ice water in her veins after some of the clutch shotmaking displayed Sunday afternoon to lead her Charlottetown Curling Club squad of third Shelly Bradley, second Robyn MacPhee and lead Leslie MacDougall to its first victory of the 12-team Canadian championship tournament, 10-5 over Quebec’s Marie-France Larouche.
Exhibit A — facing five red Quebec counters with last rock in the fourth end and the teams deadlocked at 3-3, Birt needed a piece of the button to avoid disaster. She looked to have taken too much ice and was heavy, with MacPhee and MacDougall not even daring to put a broom to it on the way down, but a hometown rub off a guard sent the shot sailing to safety on top of the pin for a game-changing single point as the crowd of 2,598 roared its approval.
An early candidate for shot of the week, Your Honour.
“That was a little scary,” said Birt. “But we knew it would curl because the ice is so wonderful here and it has a late curl, and we were just fortunate enough that it curled at the right time.”
Exhibit B — Birt heaved a fastball down the middle on her first shot in the fifth end to make two Quebec rocks go away and sit three. Larouche could only manage to get as close as second shot with her first rock, and Birt put up a picture-perfect guard to leave Larouche with very few options to score. Her circus shot couldn’t come close, and P.E.I., which gave up four stolen points in a tournament-opening 9-6 loss to New Brunswick on Saturday afternoon, had its first steal of the tournament and a 5-3 lead at the intermission.
Larouche tied it up again after six, but Birt converted a hit-and-roll for three in seven — set up perfectly by Bradley’s corner-freeze in behind cover — to count another three points and take the lead for good.
A steal of two in eight, and Larouche — who had played well in her first two outings, forcing defending champ Jennifer Jones to beat her with a draw to the button on the last shot of the game Saturday night before defeating Nova Scotia’s Heather Smith-Dacey 10-5 on Sunday morning — had had enough.
“We knew we were playing a very tough team,” said MacDougall, curling at a steady 83 per cent clip to put her second among leads in the tournament. “We were able to stick to our game and were able to pull it off.”
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Guardian photo by Brian McInnis
The P.E.I. team applauds as the other teams are marched into he arena before the start of the fourth draw.