As it turns out, they were able to carry the momentum right through to a tournament title.
Barker and her rink of third Deanna Doig, second Jenna Enge and lead Danielle Sicinski went undefeated through the star-studded 20-team event, defeating Winnipeg’s Kristy Watling 7-0 in four ends in the championship final on Sunday afternoon.
Doig -- who played with Barker in their 2017 Scotties provincial title win -- filled in for regular third Christie Gamble, who was unavailable this weekend.
Barker was coming off a solid showing at the Home Hardware Olympic Curling Pre-Trials the previous week, where she just missed the playoff round by a single win.
“After last weekend it was ‘okay, I guess we can play in Moose Jaw, it’s home’ because we needed a little bit of rest after that,” Barker joked after closing out the final with a three-spot in the fourth end, capping a run of four straight steals. “But we were fired up, we played well last week and a shot here and there and we might be qualified for the playoffs. We came out this weekend and stuck with the same game plan as always, just stay with it. We gave up a couple of big ends here and there but we were always able to claw back into it and come out and do well.”
The final saw Barker steal two in the first end, singles in the second and third and the aforementioned three in the fourth to bring things to an early end.
“I think it was just more of the same,” Barker said of the title game. “We were feeling comfortable after the first couple games today, so it was just ‘let’s go from the start, put some pressure on’. That’s served us well in the past and that’s something we’ll keep trying to do, be aggressive. As well as we’re throwing we’ll have to keep it going right through the playdowns.”
Barker posted a 3-0 record through the round robin and took an 8-2 victory over former multiple-time Scotties provincial champion Michelle Englot in the quarter-final before battling to an 11-8 win over Kaitlyn Jones.
Watling and her rink of third Hailey Ryan, second Emily Rafnason and lead Sarah Pyke also had a perfect round-robin record and defeated Sarah Hoag in her first-round playoff game before advancing to the final with a 7-6 win over two-time former national Scotties champion Chelsea Carey.
The win will give Barker a host of qualifying points for the upcoming Viterra Scotties Tournament of Hearts playdowns, and ideally make their run to the provincial tournament a touch simpler.
“Hopefully this will help set us up so we get directly into provincials instead of playing that Last Chance or something like that,” Barker said. “The competition is really strong in this province, so to come out here and win this, it feels really good, but we know we have a lot of work to do.”
