Team Koltun came out swinging at the Ottawa Valley Curling Association SuperSpiel over the weekend. But the Whitehorse junior rink was unable to keep up the fight at the 20th annual bonspiel in Ottawa.
The Koltun crew took two wins before three losses in their first appearance at the Ottawa event.
“It started out good, because we made the A draw semifinals, but then we lost our next three,” said skip Sarah Koltun. “It was a good start and then a not-so-good finish.
At the start, “we were playing pretty aggressive and making a lot of our shots - we were getting them where they needed to go. We felt like everything was starting to come together and then things started going against us and we weren’t able to keep it up for the next few games.”
Team Koltun, which includes third Andrea Sinclair, second Patty Wallingham and lead Jenna Duncan, defeated Quebec’s Team MacKay 5-3 to open the spiel. They next went over New Brunswick’s Team Daigle 6-4 in the second round.
The Whitehorse rink then took a late-game loss to Manitoba’s Team Peterson.
The loss pushed Koltun down to the B draw where they lost 6-2 to Ontario’s Team Haymes.
Team Haymes went on to qualify for Sunday’s playoffs and win the bonspiel.
Pooped from two previous games in the day, Team Koltun then lost 9-2 to U.S.‘s Team Christensen in the C draw.
“We did learn a lot. We obviously wanted to do a bit better because we only made the qualifying semifinal,” said Koltun. “We didn’t make the championship semifinal.
“But overall I feel we’ve grown a lot as a team, we’ve learned a lot and we know what we need to work on moving forward.”
Up next for Team Koltun is a pair of Women’s World Curling Tour event beginning with the Spruce Grove Cashspiel Nov. 22-24 outside of Edmonton.
As a WCT event, Koltun will skip her women’s team that includes Sinclair and Wallingham while Duncan is replaced with her older sister Chelsea.
In other curling news, Whitehorse’s Team Wallingham took in one win and three losses at the 2013 Leduc Lions Junior Men’s Bonspiel over the weekend in Leduc, Alta.
Team Wallingham - Joe Wallingham, Spencer Wallace, Brayden Klassen and Trygg Jensen - won 5-4 over Alberta’s Team van Amsterdam to open the spiel before three straight losses.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com