Einarson defeats Scheidegger, moves on to Olympic trials second tiebreaker

Kerri Einarson is moving on at the 2021 Tim Hortons Curling Trials.

Einarson beat Casey Scheidegger 8-6 Saturday morning to advance to the afternoon tiebreaker and face Krista McCarville.

Down 6-5 after nine ends, Einarson calmly threw her final stone to takeout a lone Scheidegger stone to claim the victory.

“We just take what we learned here and keep carrying that forward,” she said after the win. “We played great, so (we have to) just keep building off that.”

Scheidegger struggled in the first half of the game and was unable to recover after Einarson scored four in the third end.

“I’m really proud of the team for battling out,” she said. “We were close, we were really close (and) it was a good game.”

Forcing her way into the weekend with timely shots and a tiebreaker, Scheidegger now turns her attention to the 2022 Scotties Tournament of Hearts at the end of January in Thunder Bay, Ont.

“We learned a lot here this week, especially in terms of tactics and things like that. It’s been a long time since we played at a high level … so I think that we’re just going to take everything we can tactically and apply that at our provincials and then hopefully the Scotties too.”

The game was scheduled because of a log jam of teams finishing the round-robin with 4-4 records.

McCarville, Einarson and Scheidegger all ended up with identical records Friday night, forcing a double tiebreaker event before the women’s semifinal in the 7 p.m. evening draw.

Jennifer Jones awaits the winner of the Einarson and McCarville game.

With an admitted knack for finding the tough way to win games, Team Einarson coach Heather Nedohin hopes the team can find a way to make games less nerve-wracking in the future.

“I wish sometimes they’d change that chapter. It would be more fun to make it a little bit more interesting and take the smooth road,” she said. “It’s so funny, we’ve always said we’re climbers. Sometimes you got to get into the steep parts and we’re definitely on a climb.”

Scheidegger opened the scoring with a single in the first end on her last rock, but Einarson was able to open the game up in the third end when she scored four to lead the game 4-0.

From that point on, Einarson opted for a defensive approach, blanking ends five and seven en route to taking a 5-3 lead into the ninth end.

Scheidegger followed that up with a takeout on the final stone in the ninth end to score three and take a 6-5 lead going into the 10th end.

Einarson was able to win the game on a takeout with the hammer after Scheidegger played aggressive, trying to force a steal to win the game.