Alberta’s Val Sweeting will face off against Jennifer Jones in the Home Hardware Curling Cup semifinals this afternoon. She secured her spot with a 7-3 win over Sherry Middaugh in this morning’s tiebreaker. After losing to Jones in draw 9, Sweeting says the key to taking her on again will be trusting the ice.
“Last night I thought I was throwing them pretty close and not getting anywhere close to the result and kind of looked like a fool, but that’s okay. They played really well and they’re a really good team; we’re going to have to be sharp.”
The winner of the tiebreaker, which goes 1:30 at Revolution Place, will face Rachel Homan in Sunday’s final.
On the men’s side, Mike McEwen clinched a spot in the finals with a 10-4 victory over Steve Laycock, and hopes to repeat as champion. He had some help from Kevin Koe, who defeated Pat Simmons 7-4.
“What happened yesterday for us carried through to this morning so it was really nice not to have a let down against a team that was playing spoiler,” says McEwen. “We had a great game this morning and did our part, and things sort of worked out on the other end.”
Koe trailed Simmons 3-1 through six ends, but a three-ender in the seventh helped them come back. Third Brent Laing played it up to a bad start.
“They came out and played really well and we kind of weathered the storm and got some really big breaks that went our way… Ten ends is a long time and crazy things happen in big events in curling and we’ve been on  both sides of games like that.”
They’ll be playing in this evening’s semifinal, while Simmons and Grande Prairie’s Carter Rycroft are right back on the ice for the tiebreaker with John Epping at 1:30. Epping topped Reid Carruthers 9-4 to earn his spot this morning.
One local player won’t be returning to the ice. Despite an 8-5 win over Brad Jacobs, Beaverlodge’s Geoff Walker and Brad Jacobs just didn’t have a good enough record to advance. They’re still in the running for a spot in the 2016 World Financial Group Continental Cup in Las Vegas.