Whitehorse Daily Star

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CURLING CHAMPS – With a sweep of last weekend’s mixed curling championships, the Bob Smallwood team will be representing the Yukon at the nationals in Swan River, Man., next fall. Team members are: (l to r) Jody Smallwood, Alex Peech, Sarah Koltun and Bob Smallwood.

Smallwood will represent Yukon at nationals for mix curling – again

The Bob Smallwood rink will be representing the Yukon at the Canadian Mixed Curling Championships for the fifth consecutive year next fall.

By Chuck Tobin on February 8, 2017

The Bob Smallwood rink will be representing the Yukon at the Canadian Mixed Curling Championships for the fifth consecutive year next fall.

Smallwood and his team went through the Yukon championships this past weekend with a perfect 6-0 record, with only two of the six games being decided by one or two rocks.

Combining the results, the Smallwood rink of Jody Smallwood in lead, Alex Peech as second and Sarah Koltun as third outscored their opponents 43-19.

“It went smoothly,” Bob said in an interview Tuesday. “I can’t say it was kind of unexpected to win if all of us curled well as a team, and we did. We all curled well and it came together.”

The Herb Balsam team finished the double round robin with a 3-3 record, following by the 2-4 record of the Pat Paslawski team and the 1-5 record of the Dustin Mikkelsen team.

The Smallwood rink will travel to Swan River, Man. for the national championships in November.

Smallwood said while its the fifth straight mixed nationals for his team, this year’s squad is the fourth different team in the last five years. The best they’ve done was when he and his wife Jody were teamed up with Wade Scoffin and Nicole Baldwin for an eighth-place finish.

The addition of champion skip Sarah Koltun at third brings a new dynamic to the team, Smallwood said of the local woman who’s represented the territory at several junior and senior women’s championships.

“She has a lot of experience,” Smallwood said. “While we were playing, because we both skip, we talked about strategy and she showed me a thing or two about shots during the game, and I’m hoping she might have learned a little from me as well.”

Whatever the case, the Smallwood rink came out of the hack smokin’ hot.

In the first draw Friday morning, they defeated Paslawski 11-4 in six ends and went on to edge Balsam 5-4 after falling behind 3-1 but picked up three in the fifth to take the lead.

Balsam tied it in the sixth and Smallwood blanked the seventh and held on to the hammer to score a single in the eighth.

In the Saturday morning draw, Smallwood defeated Mikkelsen 8-2. In the afternoon against Paslawski, the winning skip sat two in the seventh to go up 6-5 but then stole one in the eighth to cement the deal.

Saturday evening, it was all about stealing. Balsam stole one in the first end, stole another in the third to take a 2-0 lead but Smallwood scored two in the fifth to tie, stole one in the sixth go up 3-2 and then stole another three in the eighth after Balsam blanked the seventh.

Smallwood defeated Mikkelsen 6-2 after six to close out the weekend Sunday morning.

The skip credits the steady play of all four team members for a solid weekend.

“If I have fairly easy shots, I’m fairly consistent,” he said lightheartedly.

Smallwood said with Koltun going to school and living down south, it will be difficult to get a lot of practice time as a unit before next November’s championship but he remains confident they’ll have some time together before Swan River.

He pointed out he and Koltun curled together in a mixed bonspiel early last fall in Manitoba. And all four curlers are quite experienced and will be curling regularly in their own leagues, he pointed out.

“I expect we will do pretty well,” Smallwood said. “I think we will make the first cut and get into the top half and then on to semis.

Meanwhile, Koltun is off next week to St. Catharines, Ont., to again represent the Yukon at the qualification round for Scotties Tournament of Hearts national championship.

Only one of the four teams in the pre-qualification round will move on to the main event. The four teams are Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and New Brunswick.

In early March, the Jon Solberg rink is off to St. Johns, NL., to represent the territory at the Tim Horton’s Brier.

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