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Kerry Galusha reflects on Scotties Tournament of Hearts performance, the season that was and the future

The last two years saw plenty of heartbreak for Kerry Galusha and company at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
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Kerry Galusha calls the line during action in the playoff game versus New Brunswick at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Thunder Bay, Ont., on Feb. 4. Curling Canada/Andrew Klaver photo

The last two years saw plenty of heartbreak for Kerry Galusha and company at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

This year in Thunder Bay, Ont., the NWT made the playoffs for the very first time. While it didn’t finish the way the team might have hoped, a little rest gave them the chance to realize just what they had acheived.

Galusha and her rink of Sarah Koltun, Margot Flemming, Jo-Ann Rizzo, Megan Loehler and coach Shona Barbour became the first team from the NWT proper to qualify for the playoff round at the Canadian women’s curling championship. Overall, they were the second team from the North to do it, following Shirley Bildfell and her rink from Whitehorse qualifying for the playoffs back in 1983.

They got into the final six by defeating Mackenzie Zacharias of Manitoba in a tiebreaker on Friday morning after those two teams, along with Nova Scotia, were all tied on five wins and three losses following the end of pool play. Galusha faced a must-win the night before against Alberta’s Laura Walker and did just that, coming out on top by a score of 7-4. Both Manitoba and Nova Scotia lost that same evening but Nova Scotia ended up getting second by virtue of beating both the NWT and Manitoba during pool play.

“We were on such a high,” said Galusha about the win over Alberta. “We didn’t get back to the hotel until about 11:30 p.m. and we had to be up at 6:30 the next morning to start preparing for the tiebreaker so very little sleep.”

Still, the NWT started the better of the two teams in the tiebreaker. Following a blank in the first end, the ladies put up three with the hammer to take the early lead. Zacharias answered with a single in the third, which the NWT countered in the fourth with two more to take a 5-1 lead. Zacharias would get one back before the mid-game break and stole another in the sixth to cut the deficit to 5-3. A blank in the seventh meant Galusha took the hammer into the eighth and what turned out to be perhaps the shot of the tournament.

A crowded house saw the NWT lying two with Rizzo set to throw her last rock. It ended up being an “around the world” shot as Rizzo’s stone bounced off a couple of Manitoba rocks in the four-foot to sit on the button, giving the NWT three and an 8-3 lead.

“We looked at it and we would have been happy scoring the deuce,” said Galusha. “We played a shot we knew wouldn’t hurt us and the three was a bonus.”

It was impressive enough that it appeared all over social media, she added.

“Every time we went on social media, there it was,” said Galusha with a giggle. “Everyone was impressed with it and it was a really good shot. Jo-Ann is in the fourth position because of my (leg) injury and she feels the pressure sometimes but she deserved a shot like that.”

The NWT would give those three points back in the next end, however, but it didn’t faze them as they ran Zacharias out of rocks in the 10th to set off what would become a very brief celebration.

30 minutes or so, to be exact, according to Galusha.

“We couldn’t really celebrate because the warm-ups are 30 minutes before the game,” she said. “We had about half an hour to sit, eat, relax, calm down and stay off of our phones.”

New Brunswick’s Andrea Crawford was the opposition in the playoffs and Galusha, starting with the hammer, put up a deuce in the first end to take a 2-0 lead. Crawford would get one back in the second, which Galusha took right back to go up 3-1 after three. Both teams would trade deuces in ends four through six to make it 5-5 but the difference came in the seventh end. Rizzo had an open hit with her final stone but overthrew it, giving Crawford a steal of two and a 7-5 lead.

“She had been making that shot all week but I think fatigue was starting to set in at that point,” said Galusha. “Little mistakes like that started creeping in — Sarah missed a peel that end also — and those two shots changed the game. We were always ahead by one or two but the seventh end is the one we want back.”

The NWT would get one back in the eighth, followed by a blank in the ninth, meaning Galusha still had to steal in the 10th to at least force an extra end but Crawford would score a single in the final end to clinch victory.

And so ended, to date, the greatest run by a NWT rink at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts but not before the perennial sentimental favourites got one final send-off from the fans — event volunteers, said Galusha — in attendance for the playoffs.

“The fans all cheered us off and they acknowledged what we did,” said Galusha. “That was really nice. We had a lot of comments from everyone around the country. Some people even told us that we gave them a bit of light, especially with the tough times some are going through because of Covid.”

And so ends another season for Team Galusha and the talk will start up again soon about what will happen for the future.

Galusha said the discussions around next season will start up again in a couple of weeks once everyone’s had a chance to really relax.

“We all need some time to take a break,” she said. “Sarah is in med school so she has that to think about. Jo-Ann has a busy September and so we may not be a busy as we were this season. Our season was definitely an amazing one. We got to do Olympic qualification, the first rink from the North to do that, we qualified for the playoffs at the Scotties, we won an event on the tour — it was awesome. We know a lot of people were watching us and it makes us want to keep going.”