 Manitoba's Kerri Einarson (Photo: Curling Canada/Andrew Klaver) defeated Alberta's Selena Sturmay 9-7 to clinch a playoff spot at the 2025 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials in Halifax, Nova Scotia. By Connor Simms, The #9 World-Ranked team out of Manitoba, with Kerri Einarson at skip, Val Sweeting at third, Shannon Birchard, Krysten Karwacki and Karlee Burgess on the front end, are finding their groove this week at the Canadian Olympic Trials. Einarson has had a bit of an up-and-down season with an event win at the Saville Shootout, but only qualified for playoffs in one of the three slams this season. They have been settling in at their positions as Karlee has not played lead since junior year, and Shannon is coming off missing most of last season. They have yet to show any signs of struggle this week, as they remain perfect at 5-0. In their opening game, Einarson defeated Christina Black (Halifax, NS) 12-5, then won 6-5 against Kate Cameron (St. Adolphe, MB) and 9-1 against Corryn Brown (Kamloops, BC). Einarson won 6-4 against Kaitlyn Lawes (Winnipeg, MB). Their next game was against Alberta's Selena Sturmay. Einarson won the opening game, drawing to the button for the hammer. The two teams traded off singles in the first three ends. Sturmay cracked the first deuce of the game in the fourth end but was immediately matched with a deuce for Einarson in the fifth. They then traded singles in the sixth to eighth ends. Einarson finally got an opportunity to take a good lead with four in the ninth end. Sturmay was unable to match it, managing only two, which gave Einarson the 9-7 victory. Einarson curled a team 85%. Individually, Kerri was 85%, Val was 89%, Shannon was 74% and Karlee was 91%. With this win, Einarson is the first team to clinch a spot in the playoffs on the men's or women's side. They will take part in the new playoff format for the trials. The top team after the round robin will clinch a spot in the finals, while the second and third seeds will play in a win-or-go-home game. From there, the final will take place with a best-of-three final. Einarson still has two more games to go. They will face Alberta's Kayla Skrlik tonight at 7:00 pm Atlantic Time (AT). They will wrap up the round robin tomorrow at 2:00 pm AT against Ontario's Rachel Homan. The Einarson team is playing to debut at the Olympics for the very first time in their careers. In 2021, they failed to make the layoffs, losing out in the tiebreakers. Catch the games on TSN (Canada) and TSN YouTube (Internationally). Catch the linescores on the CurlingZone Website. |
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Christina Black (Photo: Andrew Klaver/Curling Canada) and her Halifax, N.
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