News National

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont. — Tracy Fleury and Val Sweeting are cruising right into the BOOST National playoffs.

Both teams already qualified Thursday morning but didn’t let up in the afternoon draw to wrap up their round-robin schedules perfect at 4-0.

Fleury bested Michelle Englot 7-4 while Sweeting shut out Chelsea Carey in an 8-0 rout.

“We still want to keep our momentum,” Fleury said, “so having a good game here was still important to us.”

The Sudbury, Ont., native Fleury flipped the script from her previous outing at the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling after going 0-4 in September’s Tour Challenge Tier 1.

“It feels great,” Fleury said. “We feel like we’re playing well and it’s definitely an improvement from the last Slam we played in but that one was early so we were still kind of trying to find our groove.”

With the game all square 2-2 after three, Fleury counted three in the fourth end and never looked back in the second half.

Englot was forced to a single in five, Fleury tacked on two in six and limited the Winnipeg side to just another point in seven. Fleury held the hammer coming home in eight and didn’t have to throw either of her skip stones as Englot (1-2) needed to get her first skip rock into the house and missed the rings.

Meanwhile, the Edmonton native Sweeting shot a team-high 93 percent and was all over Carey drawing for two in the first end and pirating her remaining points as her Calgary-based opponent was on the run the whole time and struggled to get any offence.

“There were a couple here and there that were just kind of off for them, left us a bit of an out and then we capitalized,” said Sweeting, who has won three Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling titles. “That’s what you have to do out there. If you get any kind of break you have to capitalize. I feel like we did that and we feel really good going into the playoffs.”

After a blank in the second, Sweeting sat a protected shot rock in the third and Carey clipped the top stone to give up one. Carey (1-2) attempted a tricky run double in the fourth but just took off the top and surrendered another single.

Disaster struck in the fifth end as Carey looked at three counters and came up tight and on top with her last to trail by a touchdown. Another steal for Sweeting in six brought out the handshakes.

“Even though we had a playoff berth we still wanted to go out and play well,” Sweeting said. “Being a little sloppy game this morning [against Bingyu Wang] we wanted to go out and perform our best. They’re a really good team so we knew we had to play well.

“Even when we felt like we had control we had to be a little careful, really good at rock placement and that kind of thing. The girls played really well and made my job easy out there. I thought it was a good game.”

BOOST National: Tickets | Scores | Standings | Draw Schedule | TV Schedule

Elsewhere in Draw 9, Ottawa’s Rachel Homan hammered Winnipeg’s Kerri Einarson 8-1.

Homan (2-1) rolled out to a 4-0 lead with a deuce in one and back-to-back single steals in two and three. Einarson (0-3) earned her lone point in three. Homan matched with one in four and stole three in the fifth to end things early as Einarson’s last rock picked.

Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones scored two in the seventh and stole a pair in the eighth to escape with a 6-3 win over Julie Tippin of Woodstock, Ont. Jones moved up to a 3-0 record to qualify for the playoffs while Tippin is still in the mix at 1-2.

Casey Scheidegger of Lethbridge, Alta., also rallied late to reach the playoffs clipping Edmonton’s Kelsey Rocque 7-6. Down by three, Scheidegger (3-0) erased the deficit with a three-spot in the seventh and stole one in the eighth to advance. Rocque heads home winless at 0-4.

The BOOST National is the third event and second major of the 2017-18 Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling season and features 15 of the best men’s teams and 15 of the best women’s teams from around the globe.

Round-robin play runs through to Friday with the top eight on each side qualifying for the weekend playoffs.

TV coverage continues at 8 p.m. ET on Sportsnet 360, Sportsnet NOW (Canada) and gsoc.yaretv.com (international).