Team Saskatchewan 1 -- with skip Marie Wright, third Gil Dash, second Darwin Bender and lead Moose Gibson – reached the playoff round after posting a 4-2 round robin record but ended up dropping their quarter-final match 4-3 to Manitoba’s Dennis Thiessen.
As the score would indicate, it was the closest of matches: trailing 2-1 after five ends, Wright scored a pair in the sixth to take the lead but wouldn’t be able to make it stick as Thiessen used the hammer to score one in the seventh and then stole one in the eighth to take the win.
Wright did have a chance to win her final game of the tournament and Team Sask. 1 made the most of it, taking a 4-1 win over Ontario 2’s Chris Rees in the fifth-sixth place game. That match was just as close as the quarter-final in the early going, with Rees blanking the first three ends before Wright went on a steal streak, scoring one in each of the fourth and fifth ends before taking two in the sixth for a 4-0 lead. Rees would get one back in the seventh but would run out of rocks in the final frame.
Team Saskatchewan 2 – skipped by Donna Ackerman with Ellis Tull at third, Rodney Pederson second and Sheryl Pederson lead – dropped a 9-2 decision to New Brunswick’s Michael Fitzgerald in their final round robin game and finished with a 3-3 record, missing the playoffs by a single win.
Ackerman stole one in the first end against Fitzgerald, but it was a rocky road from there as she gave up four in the second, a steal of three in the third and another steal of one in the fourth to trail 8-1. The two teams would take single points the next two ends before Team Sask conceded.
The seventh-eighth place game against B.C. 2’s Gerry Austgarden was a back-and-forth contest that saw Ackerman trailing 4-2 through four ends before tying things up with a deuce in the fifth and a steal of one in the sixth for a 5-4 lead. Austgarden was able to turn things around, though, regaining the lead with two in the seventh and a stealing one in the final end to take a 7-5 victory.
Manitoba was set to face Alberta’s Jack Smart in the gold medal game later Wednesday, with Ontario #1 – including former Canadian Paralympian Jim Armstrong at skip and two of Wright’s Team Canada teammates in Collinda Joseph and Jon Thurston – taking on Northern Ontario’s Doug Dean for bronze.
