Ontario women and men advance to Travelers semifinals

The field has been narrowed to eight teams at the 2018 Travelers Curling Club Championship. Teams from Ontario and Nova Scotia make up half of the field remaining in play at the Miramichi Curling Club. Stacey Hogan and her team from Oshawa, Ont., cruised to a convincing 7-1 win over Saskatchewan’s Elaine Osmachenko in women’s quarter-final action on Friday afternoon. It was a low-scoring game with Ontario holding a 2-1 lead after five ends. Things changed in the sixth when Hogan, third Suzanne Miller, second Mandy Aston and lead Amber-Dawn Duncan scored three points and added another steal of two in the seventh end for handshakes. “It feels amazing. That was a great game. We played really well but we were super nervous out there,” Hogan said after the game. Ontario will face Nova Scotia, who earned a bye to the semifinal thanks to their first-place finish in Women’s Pool B. When asked about the nerves, Hogan suggested the extra game should help her squad. “We’re coming off an adrenaline rush and a big win and we played really well and I think we’ll have an advantage that way,” Hogan said. Alberta’s Morgan Muise ran Manitoba’s Deb McCreanor out of rocks to earn the fourth and final semifinal spot at the Travelers Championship with a 7-4 victory. Manitoba, fresh off winning a tiebreaker on Friday morning, trailed the team from the Calgary Curling Club the entire game. The next test for Muise, third Lyndsay Allen, second Sarah Evans and lead Sara Gartner will be a strong team from Northwest Territories in the semifinal on Friday at 6:30 p.m. (all times Atlantic). Sarah Stroeder’s Yellowknife foursome are trying to do something that no team from the north has done before – win a Canadian curling championship. Stroeder earned the bye to the semifinal thanks to her 5-1 round robin record, including a 6-5 win over Alberta. In the men’s event Ontario’s Matt Dupuis was very steady in his team’s 5-4 quarter-final win over Manitoba’s Andrew Wickman. Dupuis, third Terry Lichty, second Jonathan King and lead Charles Wert out of the Cornwall Curling Centre will now face unbeaten British Columbia in the men’s semifinal, also on Friday at 6:30 p.m. Dupuis is looking to win Ontario’s third Men’s Travelers title, the second in three years while B.C.’s Vic Shimizu is looking to go back-to-back for his province. Bart Sawyer of Nanaimo, B.C., won last year’s Men’s trophy . Saskatchewan’s Kory Kohuch and his team from the Nutana Curling Club in Saskatoon advanced past Quebec to keep the Saskatoon rink’s hopes of a second title in four years alive. Kohuch did not have to throw his last stone in the 6-3 quarter-final win over Patrick Martin of Trois-Rivières. The next challenge for Saskatchewan will be Nova Scotia’s Kurt Roach. The team from Cape Breton earned first place in men’s Pool A with a 5-1 record. Winners of both the men’s and women’s semifinals will play for gold on Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Miramichi Curling Club with losers from the semifinals facing off in a bronze medal game at the same time. Selected games from the 2018 Travelers Curling Club Championship will be live-streamed at www.curling.ca/2018travelers. Scores and standings from the event will be available at www.curling.ca/scoreboard. For draw times, team lineups and other event info, go to: www.curling.ca/2018travelers/