One bad call, one bad shot.
That’s what stood between a second straight Canadian Stick Curling Championship for the North Okanagan duo of John Campbell of Vernon and Tim Smith of Armstrong.
Gunning to become the first team to ever win consecutive national stick curling titles, Campbell and Smith fell 5-3 to Winnipeg’s Warren Johnson and Earl Stephenson, Manitoba’s provincial winners, in the Canadian final in Regina.
“It was just one bad shot,” said Campbell, a retired Dairyland employee. “But nobody had ever won two in a row or made it to two consecutive finals, so that was a feather in our cap.”
A total of 48 rinks competed in the Canadian championships, which is an open bonspiel, open to men and women. Eight rinks qualify out of A, B and C events to compete in a single-knockout playdown.
The North Okanagan team, which finished fourth for the second year in a row at the provincial finals in Salmon Arm (Campbell and Smith won back-to-back B.C. titles in 2009 and 2010), won their first four games in Regina, then lost a match which put them into a B qualifying final, which they won.
In the single-knockout playoffs, Campbell and Smith downed another rink from Manitoba by stealing the winning point in an extra end, then won their semifinal game by scoring three in the final end with the hammer in a win over a duo from Saskatchewan.
The win for Stephenson and Johnson extracted a measure of revenge as the pair lost to Campbell and Smith in the semifinals of the 2011 Canadian championships in Maple Ridge.
“Oh they were happy to beat us, trust me,” said Campbell. “They were very happy.”
Campbell and Smith, a retired contractor, went 7-2 at the provincials in Salmon Arm to finish fourth. The event was won by the hometown duo of Kevin Baldock and Brian Maurer, who went 3-4 as the only other B.C. rink at the nationals, and did not qualify for the playoff round.
Stick curling features teams of two who use a special stick to push the rocks down the ice to their teammate at the other end. The teammate can only sweep the stone once it reaches the hog line.
Each curler throws six rocks in the six-end games.
“It’s absolutely becoming popular with more people,” said Campbell of the sport that drew 24 teams to the provincial championships.
