Val Sweeting and her Saville Centre rink of Dana Ferguson, Joanne Taylor and Rachelle Pidherny earned a playoff berth in the Curlers Corner Autumn Gold Curling Classic playoffs on Sunday.
Sweeting (5-1) defeated clubmate Laura Crocker 8-2 in a B Event final, scoring four in the sixth end to break a 2-2 tie and recording her fourth consecutive win in the World Curling Tour bonspiel at Calgary. Crocker (4-3) later dropped a C Event final 7-5 to Bingyu Wang, but forced the Chinese rink to play the eighth end by scoring three in the seventh.
Heather Nedohin also qualified for the playoffs, winning a C Event final 5-4 in an extra end over Chelsea Carey of Winnipeg. Nedohin (5-2), who has a berth in the Canadian Olympic trials at Winnipeg Dec. 1-9, earlier lost a B semifinal to Michele Jaggi of Bern, Switzerland.
Both Sweeting and Crocker are in the Olympic pre-trials competition Nov. 5-10 at Kitchener, Ont., along with Renee Sonnenberg of Grande Prairie.
Meanwhile, Kevin Martin scored five in the first end for the second game in a row and coasted to an easy 6-2 victory over Rob Fowler of Brandon, Man., in the Direct Horizontal Drilling Fall Classic quarter-finals Sunday night at the Crestwood Curling Club. It was also Martin’s third four-end game in four starts in the $50,000 bonspiel.
Martin will play Tom Appelman, who knocked off William Lyburn of Winnipeg 9-4 in the quarter-finals, in one semifinal at 10 a.m. Monday while Brock Virtue of Regina takes on Steve Laycock of Saskatoon in an all-Saskatoon semi.
The championship final is set for 2 p.m. Monday.
Virtue defeated Brent Pierce of New Westminster, B.C., 6-2 while Laycock trounced Yusuke Morozumi of Karuizawa, Japan, 9-2 in the other quarter-finals. Pierce and Morozumi were the last two qualifiers out of the C Event earlier Sunday.
