Manitoba curlers nab silver and bronze at Canada Winter Games

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This article was published 02/03/2019 (2162 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba’s curlers struck for silver and bronze medals as competition wrapped up at the Canada Winter Games in Red Deer, Alta., Saturday.

Skip Hayley Bergman of Rosenfeld led her team, third Anastasia Ginters of Altona, Rosenfeld’s Payton Bergman and lead Cheyenne Ehnes of Manitou to the gold-medal game in the women’s division before dropping an 8-3 decision to Ontario’s Bella Croisier of Sudbury.

Bergman’s crew will bring home silver medals while Graham Loewen of Winnipeg beat Newfoundland and Labrador 8-7 for the bronze medal in the men’s division.

“It’s pretty unfortunate for us not to have won the gold but overall we’re really excited about the way we played this week,” Hayley Bergman, an 18-year-old University of Manitoba student said via telephone. “Our goal, originally, was just to make playoffs so every thing after that… was gravy, just bonus.”

Bergman’s team went 8-2 during the preliminary round and finished second only to 9-1 Ontario, handing Croisier her only defeat of the event.

Saturday’s gold-medal game was close until Croisier stole four in the sixth to take an 8-2 lead.

“We kept it close for the first couple of ends but unfortunately we gave up a pretty big steal (four), we were in a bit of a sticky situation in the sixth and just couldn’t pull it out enough to get our one point,” Hayley Bergman said. “It’s really hard to come back from a big deficit like that with only two ends left.”

Ginters and Payton Bergman are both students at W.C. Miller Collegiate in Altona while Ehnes attends Nellie McClung Collegiate.

The Bergman sisters and Ginter have played together for four years while Ehnes joined the squad for the Games. Winkler’s Jenae Zacharias, meanwhile, will take Ehnes’ place for the upcoming U18 provincials.

“I thought they had an amazing week…,” Bergman team coach Chris Hamlin said. “We had a few games that were a little better than others but our percentages overall were very steady from game to game. I think we were the No. 1 team in terms of stats for the week, so what’s not to be happy about?”

Loewen’s bronze medallists, meanwhile, also consist of lead Adam Flatt and third Sean Flatt, both Grade 12 students at St. Norbert Collegiate, and East St. Paul’s Zack Bilawka, who attends River East Collegiate.

Loewen and the Flatts have played together for three years while Bilawka joined the squad prior to the Canada Games trials last spring.

“The thing is we had never met any of the teams before going into this competition,” said Loewen, a Grade 12 student at Miles Macdonnell Collegiate. “We’ve never been to a national event and all the national players we do know were already aged out because this is a U18 competition.

“So going in we had our hopes high — the 2015 winners were from Manitoba — and obviously a bit of a target on our backs because of that. But we were hoping to get something done and I guess we did with the bronze, but not quite what we were hoping for.”

Loewen’s squad went 6-4 in the preliminary pool, clinching the fifth of six playoff spots, and rattled off a 5-3 quarter-final win over Alberta before dropping a heart-breaking 6-5 extra-end decision to B.C. in the semifinal Friday night. B.C. went on to beat Ontario 7-2 for the gold on Saturday.

The Loewen team moves on to the U18 provincials, slated for Swan River March 7-10. 

TOBANS FIFTH IN WOMEN’S HOCKEY: Manitoba’s under-18 women’s hockey team went out in fine form Saturday, claiming fifth place with a 5-3 win over Saskatchewan.

Ste. Anne’s Raygan Kirk made 31 stops in the Manitoba net while her Saskatchewan counterpart Arden Kliewer finished with 24 saves.

Gimli’s Olivia Cvar, Kate Gregoire of Ste. Anne, Winnipeg’s Danica Namaka, Cross Lake’s Kennesha Miswaggon and Morden’s Makenzie McCallum scored for the winners, who led 2-0 and 4-1 at the period breaks.

Grace Shirley, Joelle Fiala and Kennedy Bobyck replied with goals for Saskatchewan.

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @sawa14