In a busy and scattered season, Marika Van Osch has found direction – she’s heading to nationals.
Van Osch and her teammates Sarah Daniels, Dezaray Hawes and Megan Daniels won the B.C. junior women’s championship on Sunday in Kamloops, defeating longtime rival Corryn Brown 11-3 in the final.
“We expected a really tough game, so we brought our A game and we played really well. I was really proud of my team for that,” said Van Osch, who plays third.
Team Brown had defeated Team Daniels in last year’s B.C. final, and then twice more last week during the tournament. But the Daniels rink came closer as the tourney went along, then broke through for the win when it mattered most.
“We kind of came in with the mindset that we didn’t have much to lose, because they were the defending champions,” Van Osch said. “We just wanted to bring our all and see what would happen.”
The game wasn’t close for very long, as Team Daniels scored five in the fourth end to take a 5-1 lead and firm control of the final.
“You play very clean, you kind of hit everything,” Van Osch said. “But you also have to be really careful that you don’t … get ahead of yourself.”
They kept focused and closed it out.
“It was fantastic,” said Van Osch. “Losing last year, it was kind of heartbreaking, so this year it was really amazing for our team to pull it out. We were really happy.”
Team Daniels now becomes Team B.C. and will head to Stratford, Ont., in two weeks’ time for the Canadian Junior Curling Championships. They’ll be an experienced group, as Van Osch, skip Sarah Daniels and lead Megan Daniels represented B.C. in 2014.
Playing third is a good position, Van Osch said. She gets to contribute both by throwing stones and with her sweeping. Being an impact player is important to her, as she admits it’s been frustrating contributing only as an alternate this season on her other team, a women’s rink skipped by her sister Kesa Van Osch.
But Marika’s bouncing back and forth is starting to sort itself out. The women’s B.C. Scotties will overlap, so she will go there first, then fly out for the start of junior nationals.
“It’s a very cool thing,” Van Osch said. “You get to curl with the B.C. flag on your back. We’re all really excited.”
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