Saskatoon’s Steve Laycock gave his fans something to cheer about on Thursday night at the North Battleford Civic Centre.
After losing his first two games this week at the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling’s Meridian Canadian Open, Laycock staved off elimination from the tournament with a 9-1 win in six ends over American Heath McCormick in a ‘C’ event contest.
“We’re pretty much taking things one shot at a time right now,” Laycock said. “You can’t go out there and be of the mindset of thinking that we have to win a bunch of games in a row just to make the playoffs.
“We were able to get off to a pretty good start. We got the deuce to take an early lead, and we were able to capitalize on some unlucky breaks that they had.”
Thursday night’s win was a nice improvement for the Nutana Curling Club foursome, as they struggled Wednesday in an 8-3 loss to Reid Carruthers of Winnipeg.
“Scoreboard wise, it looked like we were keeping things close in the first half, but we were making the full shots and leaving ourselves in tough situations,” Laycock said.
“That wasn’t the case tonight. We were a lot more comfortable with the ice and we’re starting to get things back on track.”
Laycock will be back in action at 8:30 a.m. against Kingston’s Greg Balsdon, who fell to the ‘C’ event after a 5-4 loss to Brad Gushue of St. John’s on Thursday night.
Sudbury’s Tracy Fleury rebounded from a pair of tough of losses with an impressive win of her own in the ‘C’ event, as she cruised to an 8-2 triumph over Calgary’s Chelsea Carey, which knocked the reigning Scotties Tournament of Hearts champion out of the competition.
“We were able to make more shots in this one,” Fleury said. “In our first couple of games we were struggling with our execution, and that was something we were a lot stronger with today.
“We tried to forget about the two losses that we had and started fresh today. Overall, I think we did a really good job of that.”
Elsewhere, John Morris and his Vernon, B.C. rink capped off a two-win day by defeating Winnipeg’s Reid Carruthers by a score of 6-3 in the ‘B’ event.
“That was one of our best games of the entire year against Reid tonight,” Morris, who calls the game and throws third stones for his rink while Jim Cotter throws fourth stones, said.
“They’ve been coming on strong over the last couple of years, so to play as we did against them says a lot for the character that we have on our team.”
The other men’s ‘B’ event game went to an extra-end as Winnipeg’s Mike McEwen came away with an 8-7 win over Brendan Bottcher.
Bottcher will now play in a ‘C’ event game at 8:30 a.m. Friday where he’ll look to stave off elimination against John Epping of Toronto.
There will also be three women’s contests in the morning draw, one of which is a win or go home affair between two struggling teams as Ottawa’s Rachel Homan takes on Russia’s Anna Sidorova.
Over in the ‘B’ event, Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg will square off with Lethbridge’s Casey Scheidegger and Kelsey Rocque of Edmonton will battle Bingyu Wang’s rink from China.
