Kerry Galusha and Team NWT went where no women’s curling rink from the territory had ever gone before, even if it was just a short trip.
Galusha and her rink of Sarah Koltun, Margot Flemming, Jo-Ann Rizzo, Megan Koehler and coach Shona Barbour officially made the playoffs at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Thunder Bay, Ont., after beating Manitoba’s Mackenzie Zacharias by a score of 8-6 in the tiebreaker, Feb. 4. Team NWT ran Zacharias out of rocks in the 10th end to secure the win and become the first team from the North to qualify for the playoffs since 1983 when Shelly Bildfell of Whitehorse made it to the semifinal. That was under the old Yukon/NWT banner.
They got into the tiebreaker after beating Alberta’s Laura Walker, 7-4, in their final pool game while Zacharias lost to Team Canada’s Kerri Einarson.
Galusha started the tiebreaker with the hammer and blanked the opening end but put up three in the second end to draw first blood. Zacharias answered with a single in the third before Galusha scored two more with the hammer in the fourth to take a 5-1 lead. Zacharias scored a single in the fifth and stole another to cut the deficit to 5-3. The seventh end was blanked but the big blow came in the eighth as Galusha put up three to extend her lead to 8-3. Zacharias replied with three of her own in the ninth to make it 8-6 but Galusha was able to seal it in the 10th end.
“This is pretty exciting for the North,” said Galusha in the post-match press conference. “We’re really proud to represent the Northwest Territories. We’ve gotten so much support from home. I wasn’t sure how we would come out today but we came out strong.”
Galusha and company had a grand total of an hour to celebrate as they took on New Brunswick’s Andrea Crawford in the first round of the playoffs on Friday afternoon and they came out the better of the two teams. The NWT scored a deuce with the hammer in the first end, which Crawford answered with a single in the second. The NWT scored a single of their own in the third before Crawford’s deuce in the fourth to tie the game at 3-3.
Both teams traded deuces in the fifth and sixth end but the difference turned out to be a steal of two for Crawford in the seventh end after Rizzo missed a takeout to take a 7-5 lead. Galusha got one of those points back in the eighth to cut it to 7-6. Both teams blanked the ninth and Crawford sealed it in the 10th with a single to move on.