At a small town curling club, the chances are usually good a local rink will capture the top title.
However, this past weekend at the Boyle Ladies Bonspiel, the odds were against the locals with a number of out-of-town rinks in attendance.
Despite that, the rink skipped by Elaine Leeuw hung on for an 8-6 win in the A-event final over Ruby Plamondon from Lac La Biche. Leeuw was up 4-2 through four ends when she stole three in the fifth and it looked like it was all over.
But Plamondon got two in the sixth and stole another two in the seventh to make the last end interesting. Fortunately for Leeuw, she got one behind cover early and Plamondon was left with a difficult in-off shot just to force Leeuw to throw her last rock and maybe get to an extra end, but it overcurled and missed the target to give Leeuw the win.
In the B-event final, the Lac La Biche rink skipped by Penny Moon cruised to a 10-0 win over the Athabasca rink of Trudy Gyte, Virgina Gill, Penny Smith, Pam Matson and fifth player Kim Nunn in a contest that saw the Smith rink make every shot and the ladies from Athabasca trying to figure out why the rocks weren’t going where they were throwing them.
In the C-event final, it was the Athabasca rink of Candice Jewell making a big comeback 7-6 win over Boyle’s Shelly Tkachuk.
Jewell gave up a steal in the seventh to go down two heading to the last end, where she managed to lie three with skip stones to go and Tkachuk was unable to place any of her stones in the house, handing the win to Jewell without having to toss her final stone.
