Suzanne Birt reached the championship round at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts a second straight year with higher ambitions.
The Prince Edward Island skip upped her workload on and off the ice to be ready for battle against some of the world’s best teams.
Birt’s 8-7 win over Kerry Galusha of Northwest Territories on Wednesday propelled the Charlottetown Curling Club foursome into the round of eight at the national women’s championship in Moose Jaw, Sask.
Birt joined Ontario’s Rachel Homan, Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson, the Jennifer Jones wild-card team, Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville and defending champion Chelsea Carey in the round of eight at the national women’s curling championship.
Tiebreaker games Thursday morning will determine the two teams that join them.
WATCH | McCarville earns extra-ends victory to advance:
Saskatchewan will have to play a tiebreaker after losing 4-3 to Krista McCarville’s Northern Ontario rink. 1:14
Birt’s taste of the championship round in last year’s Hearts in Sydney, N.S., had Birt believing her team could achieve more if it did more.
She finished outside the Page playoff at 6-5. Birt lost in an extra end to Homan in the championship round.
“We realized how close we were at the very end of the Scotties,” Birt said Wednesday. “You put a little extra work into it and anything can happen.”
She doubled her team’s World Curling Tour events over last season.
Her team worked with a physical trainer, a sports psychologist and enlisted the expertise of current Manitoba men’s champion Jason Gunnlaugson for analytics and strategy.
“Experience is a big thing, but a lot of hard work throughout the year is probably the most important thing,” the 38-year-old Birt said.
“You’ve got to work on every aspect of your game, strategy, technical, mental, analytics. It’s all a huge part of the game. We’ve worked very hard at that this year.”
Tiebreakers in play
Manitoba (6-1) finished first in Pool A ahead of Northern Ontario (5-2). Carey’s Team Canada, Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle and New Brunswick’s Andrea Crawford were all (4-3).
The three-loss teams were 1-1 against each other in the round robin.
Carey earned the third seed by virtue of the draw-the-button competition that preceded the opening draw of the tournament.
Saskatchewan and New Brunswick will square off in a tiebreaker to determine the fourth seed in the pool.
Manitoba beat Alberta 8-5 to eliminate Alberta’s Laura Walker from contention.
Six-time Canadian champion Jones and three-time champ Homan topped Pool B at 6-1 ahead of Birt at 5-2.
Nova Scotia’s Mary-Anne Arsenault and B.C.’s Corryn Brown (4-3) will play a tiebreaker.
WATCH | Arsenault cruises by Brown:
Mary-Anne Arsenault beats Corryn Brown 10-4 in Draw 13, Nova Scotia and B.C. will battle again on Thursday in a tiebreaker. 0:44
Teams in the championship round play four games against opponents from the other pool.
The four rinks with the best records advance to Saturday’s Page playoff. The semifinal and final are Sunday.
A 22-year-old Birt — then Suzanne Gaudet — made a stunning Hearts debut in 2003. She topped the preliminary round at 10-1 and finished third in the tournament.
Birt has yet to match her rookie success skipping P.E.I. an 11th time.
The two-time Canadian and former world junior champion was the fourth seed in the 2007 playoffs in Lethbridge, Alta., and lost out to Jones.
Ranked No. 9 among women’s teams in Canada compared to 25th a year ago, Birt opened the season reaching the quarter-finals of the Stu Sells Oakville Tankard in Ontario.
WATCH | McCarville throws perfect game against Walker:
Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville threw a perfect game in a 4-3 wi. over Alberta’s Laura Walker. 0:42
Birt finished top three in six of seven Atlantic Canada events the first half of the season.
“The more times you do something, like the 10,000-hour rule, that’s exactly what we needed to do this year is just get the reps in and make mistakes and learn from them,” second Meaghan Hughes said.
“We played a ton of games this season and did a lot of things differently.
“We worked with a strategy coach, we work with a trainer, we worked with a sports psychologist. We tried to look at all the different facets of our game and make sure we’re covering those off.”
Hughes is among the pregnant curlers at this year’s Hearts. She’s due this summer as is the Saskatchewan front end of Jessie Hunkin and Kara Thevenot.
Hughes says P.E.I. is going into the championship round under the radar.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 27 points in a record-setting performance and the Sacramento Kings beat the Toronto Raptors 122-107 on Wednesday night.
Domantas Sabonis added 17 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds for his third triple-double of the season for Sacramento. He shot 6 for 6 from the field and 5 for 5 at the free-throw line.
Keegan Murray chipped in with 22 points and 12 rebounds, and De’Aaron Fox scored 21.
The 35-year-old DeRozan has scored at least 20 points in each of his first eight games with the Kings, breaking a franchise mark established by Chris Webber when he reached 20 in his first seven games with Sacramento in 1999.
DeRozan spent the past three seasons with the Chicago Bulls. The six-time All-Star also has played for Toronto and San Antonio during his 16-year NBA career.
RJ Barrett had 23 points to lead the Raptors. Davion Mitchell scored 20 in his first game in Sacramento since being traded to Toronto last summer.
Takeaways
Raptors: Toronto led for most of the first three quarters before wilting in the fourth. The Raptors were outscored 33-14 in the final period.
Kings: Fox played strong defense but struggled again shooting from the floor as he is dealing with a finger injury. Fox went 5 for 17 and just 2 of 8 on 3-pointers. He is 5 for 25 from beyond the arc in his last three games.
Key moment
The Kings trailed 95-89 early in the fourth before going on a 9-0 run that gave them the lead for good. DeRozan started the spurt with a jumper, and Malik Monk scored the final seven points.
Key stat
Sabonis had the eighth game in the NBA since at least 1982-83 with a triple-double while missing no shots from the field or foul line. The previous player to do it was Josh Giddey for Oklahoma City against Portland on Jan. 11.
Up next
Raptors: At the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night, the third stop on a five-game trip.
VANCOUVER – The Vancouver Whitecaps are one win away from moving on to the next round of the Major League Soccer playoffs.
To get there, however, the Whitecaps will need to pull off the improbable by defeating the powerhouse Los Angeles FC for a second straight game.
Vancouver blanked the visitors 3-0 on Sunday to level their best-of-three first-round playoff series at a game apiece. As the matchup shifts back to California for a decisive Game 3 on Friday, the Whitecaps are looking for a repeat performance, said striker Brian White.
“We take the good and the bad from last game, learn from what we could have done better and go to LAFC with confidence and, obviously, with a whole lot of respect,” he said.
“We know that we can go there and give them a very good fight and hopefully come away with a win.”
The winner of Friday’s game will face the No. 4-seed Seattle Sounders in a one-game Western Conference semifinal on Nov. 23 or 24.
The ‘Caps finished the regular season eighth in the west with a 13-13-8 record and have since surprised many with their post-season play.
First, Vancouver trounced its regional rivals, the Portland Timbers, 5-0 in a wild-card game. Then, the squad dropped a tightly contested 2-1 decision to the top-seeded L.A. before posting a decisive home victory on Sunday.
Vancouver has scored seven goals this post-season, second only to the L.A. Galaxy (nine). Vancouver also leads the league in expected goals (6.84) through the playoffs.
No one outside of the club expected the Whitecaps to win when the Vancouver-L. A. series began, said defender Ranko Veselinovic.
“We’ve shown to ourselves that we can compete with them,” he said.
Now in his fifth season with the ‘Caps, Veselinovic said Friday’s game will be the biggest he’s played for the team.
“We haven’t had much success in the playoffs so, definitely, this is the one that can put our season on another level,” he said.
This is the second year in a row the Whitecaps have faced LAFC in the first round of the playoffs and last year, Vancouver was ousted in two straight games.
The team isn’t thinking about revenge as it prepares for Game 3, White said.
“More importantly than (beating LAFC), we want to get to the next round,” he said. “LAFC’s a very good team. We’ve come up against them a number of times in different competitions and they always seem to get the better of us. So it’d be huge for us to get the better of them this time.”
Earning a win last weekend required slowing L.A.’s transition game and limiting offensive opportunities for the team’s big stars, including Denis Bouanga.
Those factors will be important again on Friday, said Whitecaps head coach Vanni Sartini, who warned that his team could face a different style of game.
“I think the most important thing is going to be to match their intensity at the beginning of the game,” he said. “Because I think they’re going to come at us a million miles per hour.”
The ‘Caps will once again look to captain Ryan Gauld for some offensive firepower. The Scottish attacking midfielder leads MLS in playoff goals with five and has scored in all three of Vancouver’s post-season appearances this year.
Gearing up for another do-or-die matchup is exciting, Gauld said.
“Knowing it’s a winner-takes-all kind of game, being in that kind of environment is nice,” he said. “It’s when you see the best in players.”
LAFC faces the bulk of the pressure heading into the matchup, Sartini said, given the club’s appearances in the last two MLS Cup finals and its 2022 championship title.
“They’re supposed to win and we are not,” the coach said. “But it’s beautiful to have a little bit of pressure on us, too.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
Each PWHL team operated under its city name, with players wearing jerseys featuring the league’s logo in its inaugural season before names and logos were announced last month.
The Toronto Sceptres, Montreal Victoire, Ottawa Charge, Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost and New York Sirens will start the PWHL’s second season on Nov. 30 with jerseys designed to reflect each team’s identity and to be sold to the public as replicas.
Led by PWHL vice-president of brand and marketing Kanan Bhatt-Shah, the league consulted Creative Agency Flower Shop to design the jerseys manufactured by Bauer, the PWHL said Thursday in a statement.
“Players and fans alike have been waiting for this moment and we couldn’t be happier with the six unique looks each team will don moving forward,” said PWHL senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer.
“These jerseys mark the latest evolution in our league’s history, and we can’t wait to see them showcased both on the ice and in the stands.”
Training camps open Tuesday with teams allowed to carry 32 players.
Each team’s 23-player roster, plus three reserves, will be announced Nov. 27.
Each team will play 30 regular-season games, which is six more than the first season.
Minnesota won the first Walter Cup on May 29 by beating Boston three games to two in the championship series.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
