News Masters

TRURO, N.S. — Casey Scheidegger is the first past the post and into the playoffs at the Canadian Beef Masters.

Scheidegger and her club from Lethbridge, Alta., moved up to a 3-0 record to qualify following a 4-0 shutout over Jamie Sinclair’s American team.

Team Scheidegger still has one more round-robin game remaining Friday afternoon against Edmonton’s Team Laura Walker and aim to sharpen their skills heading into the quarterfinals.

“We always love making the playoffs so I think our goal this week is to make it past the quarters,” said Scheidegger, who captured the HDF Insurance Shoot-Out last month. “We won an event and dropped out of the quarters in our other two, so a big goal is to try and get past the quarters this time.

“We want to have a really good last game against Walker because that one against Sinclair wasn’t our best game. I think both teams sort of struggled with a little bit of the ice, maybe a little bit of the rocks and we didn’t think we were in fine form, so we’re hoping to bring it tomorrow.”

The 2017 Meridian Canadian Open champion Scheidegger didn’t get off to an ideal start with her last in the second end rolling too deep and only scoring a single, however, Team Sinclair struggled far worse.

Sinclair, the winner of the last season’s Players’ Championship, misfired her last in the fifth to concede a point and her woes continued in the sixth and seventh giving up additional steals. Her last in six over-curled and caught a piece of the button but not enough to outcount Scheidegger’s last and a hard throw in seven into the pile did not get the right result when the dust settled.

“Both teams were playing really careful that first half and we decided that we should put some pressure on, put some guards up and things ended up going our way,” Scheidegger said. “You can never be sad about that.”

Team Scheidegger third Cary-Anne McTaggart eliminated both guards with her first stone in the eighth to leave nowhere to hide and her second sealed the deal on an open hit into the house. The five-rock rule meant that even with the four-point lead, Scheidegger wasn’t going to take any chances and just kept it clean.

“I think with five rock we’re still trying to figure out,” Scheidegger said. “It’s kind of scary when you have a lead a little bit because we saw last night teams losing or giving up three in the last end to tie the game or lose the game. I mean, we were four up but still, you never know. We wanted to keep it really clean just to make sure.”

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Elsewhere, a couple of Winnipeg teams earned big wins during the seventh draw. Team Jennifer Jones (2-0) trounced Edmonton’s Team Chelsea Carey 11-3 and Team Darcy Robertson (2-1) downed American Team Nina Roth 10-2.

The reigning world champion Jones jumped into the lead with a deuce in the second and stole back-to-back pairs of points in the third and fourth ends to roll away. Carey (1-1) took two in the fifth but Jones put the exclamation mark on the match with a five count in the sixth.

Robertson counted three-enders in the first and third ends plus a score of four in the sixth. Roth (1-2) was limited to a single in four and a steal of one in five.

Team Tracy Fleury of East St. Paul, Man., improved to a 1-2 record with an 8-2 victory over Team Silvana Tirinzoni of Switzerland. Tirinzoni, who finished runner-up at last month’s Princess Auto Elite 10, has been eliminated from playoff contention at 0-3.

In the lone men’s match, Winnipeg’s Team Reid Carruthers held off American Team John Shuster 5-4. After the reigning Olympic gold medallist Shuster scored three in the seventh to tie it, Team Carruthers fourth Mike McEwen came through in the final frame with a clutch come-around bump and stuck around for the winning single.

“We made it a little harder on ourselves than we needed to but they’re a good team basically lead to skip,” said Team Carruthers spare second Matt Wozniak. “Felt the pressure there for sure at the end but Mike threw a great one on his last to win.”

Wozniak previously played second for McEwen and won seven Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling titles including the Masters right here in this very rink.

“I’ve been on that side of him when he’s throwing those rocks hundreds of times so everything he did in the hack and in his mindset going into the shot was perfect,” Wozniak said. “He threw it good.”

Team McEwen broke up after last season with the skip sliding over to fourth stones on Team Carruthers. Wozniak did not join a new team and is filling in for Derek Samagalski, who is back home as his fiancee gave birth to a daughter Wednesday.

It’s a bit of something old and something new as Wozniak now gets the opportunity to sweep alongside McEwen.

“He’s a good sweeper,” Wozniak said with a smile. “Everyone is giving him heat for his sweeping but he holds rocks really well and it’s fun sweeping with him. He’s trying his hardest out there and I like it.”

Carruthers climbed to a 2-0 record while Shuster is now at 2-1.

The Canadian Beef Masters is the second event and first major of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling season with 15 of the top men’s teams and 15 of the top women’s teams from around the world. Divisions are split into three pools for round-robin play during the week with the top eight overall qualifying for Saturday’s quarterfinals. The semifinals and finals are set for Sunday.

Round-robin action continues at 3:30 p.m. AT (2:30 p.m. ET) with broadcast coverage on Sportsnet and online at Sportsnet NOW (Canada) and Yare (international).

NOTES: Winners take home $30,000 of the $250,000 total purse plus berths to the season-ending Humpty’s Champions Cup in April. … Points are also on the line for the Pinty’s Cup, which is awarded to the overall season champions following the conclusion of the Players’ Championship.