McCarville, Northern Ontario grateful for support despite early Scotties exit

THUNDER BAY, Ont. — Krista McCarville will be curling tomorrow, just not on the sheet of ice she was hoping to.

As the Scotties Tournament of Hearts moves into the playoff round on Friday at McCarville’s home club, Fort William Gardens, the skip will be back to her full-time job and taking her Grade 6 class to the Atikokan Curling Club for a day of fun curling, since it’s an elective day for her students in the curriculum. 

“I’m going back to work tomorrow,” said McCarville, a teacher, just minutes after her Team Northern Ontario won their fourth straight game at their home Scotties to move to 4-4, two wins shy of what they needed to make the playoffs. “I just thought there’s no point sitting around the hotel room pouting.” 

While the team wasn’t exactly in good spirits after their early exit from the national championship, the crowd support certainly helped lift their spirits a bit. McCarville and two of her long-time teammates, Sarah Potts and Ashley Sippala, are from right here in Thunder Bay, while Kendra Lilly is from Sudbury and Andrea Kelly is the import from New Brunswick. And as they left the ice Thursday afternoon for the last time during this home bonspiel in their green and yellow Northern Ontario uniforms, the team was treated to a whole lot of cheers and moose calls and cow bells and even a partial standing ovation. 

But it wasn’t the week McCarville and her teammates dreamt of, after getting out to an 0-4 start that they couldn’t recover from, even though they won the rest of the way, their finale a 9-2 drubbing of New Brunswick in eight ends. The 42-year-old McCarville and her Northern Ontario rink are perennial playoff contenders — she’s a three-time medallist at this national tournament, with silver medal finishes at the Scotties in both 2016 and 2022. Two years ago in Kamloops, Team McCarville won bronze.

“I mean, when you start oh and four, you’re just hoping to go .500 in the tournament,” McCarville said of this disappointing home Scotties. “We played a lot better the last four games, and I think that’s the team that we are is the team that we played, just to finish off the tournament. And so that does feel a lot better. I mean, you still don’t feel 100 per cent, but finishing it off strong is a good thing.” 

“It was bittersweet,” added Potts. “It was nice to play well, but then it’s also like, why couldn’t we have done that a little bit earlier? But we had a tough start. The teams we played were really strong, and we’re just thankful the crowd hung in there with us. They didn’t start booing us. They were still cheering right ‘til the end, so that helped.” 

Back in 2022, Thunder Bay hosted the Scotties, and until the playoffs, teams played in an empty Fort William Gardens. It wasn’t until playoffs that some fans were allowed in to fill a few sections of the curling club, and were treated to McCarville’s Team Northern Ontario making a run to the final.

The team’s run at home ended when Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson won her second of four straight Scotties titles. This year in Thunder Bay, Einarson, third Val Sweeting, newly installed second Karlee Burgess and lead Krysten Kawacki didn’t get off to the best start, opening with a 2-2 record, but they played their way back into contention with four straight wins, including a comeback after being down by five points to Manitoba’s Kate Cameron.

To seal the playoff berth, Einarson made a takeout with her final stone to sit three and earn a 9-6 victory over fellow Manitoban Kaitlyn Lawes on Thursday night, a play followed by appreciative moose calls and cow bells from the crowd. 

“We haven’t made it easy on ourselves,” a grinning Einarson said after her team clinched the top spot in a very tight Pool B. “We put our backs against the wall, and when that happens, that brings out the best in us. And I think we're trending in the right direction, and I think we're getting hot at the right time.”

Both of the other teams in Pool B who sat at 5-3 were also in win-and-you’re-in situations for the playoffs, and Team B.C.'s Christina Black and Team Ontario’s Danielle Inglis managed to win those pressure-filled games on Thursday.

Inglis had a convincing 9-2 win over Team Northwest Territories in the finale for long-time skip, Kerry Galusha. After competing in more than 20 Scotties, Galusha got huge applause from the crowd after her last game on this stage. 

Inglis, competing in her second Scotties, is at the helm of the lowest-ranked team left in contention here, ranked 11^th in Canada, and seeded No. 3 in Pool B. The 36-year-old from Ottawa figures most see her team as the underdog.

“The way we’re feeling right now, playing right now, I feel we’re a team to be reckoned with,” Inglis said, with a grin. 

And so, the playoffs are set here at the Scotties. Friday at 1 p.m. ET will see Team Canada play Team Black and Manitoba’s Team Einarson play Alberta’s Kayla Skrlik. The winners advance to Saturday night’s page playoffs, while the loser of Homan-Black plays Brown, and the loser of Einarson-Skrlik plays Inglis for a chance to move on.

Team Canada, the defending champions and world No. 1 skipped by Rachel Homan, is the only undefeated team in the field at 8-0. 

As the top six teams get set for playoffs, 12 others are done at this edition of the Scotties. McCarville’s daughter, Bella, is away curling at the U18 Canadian championships in Saskatoon, but the skip plans to bring her son out on the weekend to see how their hometown Scotties finishes.

Before that, it’s back to work for the long-time skipper from Thunder Bay, who didn’t want to take that extra day of unpaid leave if she wasn’t still in the mix at the Scotties. 

“I thought, you know what would be a fun day? Let’s take the kids curling,” McCarville said. “Why would I sit around doing nothing when I can go and be with students that I love?” 

And she’ll still be playing the sport she loves, even if things didn’t go the home team’s way this week.