News National

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont. — Sponsor’s exemption Krista McCarville has improved to a 2-1 record in the Boost National after dispatching Chelsea Carey 7-3 during Draw 10 action Friday morning. 

McCarville opened the event with a tough loss to defending champion Rachel Homan of Ottawa and regrouped to now guarantee her team will either play in a tiebreaker or move straight onto the quarterfinals.

The Thunder Bay team has one more round-robin game to go in the evening versus Tracy Fleury of Sudbury.

“We definitely want to win one more,” Team McCarville lead Sarah Potts said. “I mean having two wins is nice but you could be in a tiebreaker and our shootout isn’t the greatest so we definitely want one more win so we’ll be playing hard tonight.”

“They’re our provincial rivals so obviously both teams will be up for that game and want to play well,” she added. “They’re our friends but it is that provincial rivalry so you want to win those ones for sure.”

McCarville swiped an early 3-0 lead stealing one in the first and two in the second. 

“Early on we wanted to keep things simple and it didn’t go that way,” Potts said. “There were a couple rocks in play but we just ended up with a couple in really good spots so we switched it up and went for it a bit. We left Chelsea with some hard shots.”

Carey, who beat McCarville in the Scotties Tournament of Hearts final last February, hit and rolled out to only get one in the third. McCarville padded her lead with a great shot in the fourth bouncing off her own stone to get to Carey’s counter and score a deuce for a 5-1 advantage. 

McCarville fell into trouble in the fifth and made a double with her last to limit the damage as Carey drew for two points to cut the deficit in half. A heavy roll gave McCarville just a single in six. Carey couldn’t close the gap with a tricky double raise double attempt in seven, only pushing one counter out for a steal and McCarville kept it clean in the eighth to run her out of rocks. 

“Later in the game she had a couple really tough ones to even score,” Potts said. “We just had a couple shots in good spots and we’re peeling well and making shots so it was a good game overall.”

Elsewhere, Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg scored three in the seventh to finish a 6-2 win over Switzerland’s Binia Feltscher. Both teams wrapped up pool play with identical 2-2 records.

In men’s action, Calgary’s Kevin Koe (3-0) secured a playoff spot with a 6-4 victory over Scotland’s David Murdoch (0-4) and Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen (2-2) scored four in the sixth and stole one in the seventh to win 6-2 over American John Shuster (0-3).

Three more preliminary draws are on tap Friday with the top eight teams in both divisions qualifying for the playoffs.