(by Larry Wood)
Heather Nedohin said it would be a different day and a different skip and she was true to her word. The Canadian leader who admittedly had a bad Thursday and lost two games to drop into tiebreaker territory at the Ford World Women’s Curling Championship, produced a tenacious 95-per-cent shooting percentage on her last pair of rocks as Canada eliminated Allison Pottinger’s U.S. contender 9-8 Friday afternoon to advance to the championship’s Page Three-Four fracas Saturday at 1 p.m.
Team Canada celebrates after winning the tie-breaker. (Photo: CCA/Michael Burns)
In some respects, the issue was stretched early when Canada followed a first-end blank with a four-count in the second end.
Pottinger missed both her shots there and never was able to recover although she did manage a trio of deuces with last rock to render the final score respectable.
“I thought the team as a whole played solid,” said Nedohin, severely understating the case.
“There’s the one good thing I took away from all the e-mails and texts that I got last night — keep believing!
“I didn’t have a good day out there Thursday, I didn’t show up when the team needed me, and I just said, ‘Today I need to play well’. I had opportunities to make shots today and I think we nailed them as a team. It was a really good team show, I think.”
The winner of Saturday’s Page playoff advances to a 6 p.m. semi-final. The loser tumbles into a bronze-medal argument on Sunday at 9 a.m.