Forrester nabs Viterra berth

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This article was published 08/01/2023 (670 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the first time in four years, Hayden Forrester will be competing at the Viterra Championship.

Forrester’s rink from the Fort Rouge Curling Club in Winnipeg, which features Brennan Sampson at third, Cyrus Brandt at second and Alex Fontaine at lead, earned their spot at next month’s provincial playdowns in Neepawa with a 7-5 win over Shawn Taylor’s squad in a winner-take-all affair at the Brandon men’s bonspiel on Sunday afternoon at the Brandon Curling Club.

“One of our goals at the start of the year was to get to the Viterra and we’re happy to have accomplished that,” Forrester said. “This is a brand-new rink and even though we’re not right out of juniors, it pretty much feels like it with the fact that we’ve been away from the game for a bit due to work and school.

“There really wasn’t a lot of pressure on us as we didn’t have a major competitive schedule, so we decided to play it by year, see where our team dynamics were, and go from there.”

This year’s Viterra, which runs from Feb. 8 to 13 at the Yellowhead Centre, will mark Forrester’s fourth appearance at the event.

He skipped his own squads at the 2016 and 2017 championships in Selkirk and Portage la Prairie before throwing third stones for Ty Dilello’s rink at the 2019 provincials in Virden.

The battle for a spot in this year’s Viterra was forced to take place after Forrester and Taylor – who were the only rinks in the playoffs that had yet to clinch a provincial spot – lost quarterfinal matchups to Brandon’s Steve Irwin and Gladstone’s Jeff Stewart respectively.

“We felt like we had control of the game against Steve but we just let it slip away,” Forrester said.

“It’s pretty tough to go back out there after a loss like that, especially when it had already been a busy weekend with seven games in three days. We were pretty tired, but I’m proud of how the boys stuck with it and we were able to sneak it out at the end.”

The turning point in the game came in the fifth end when Forrester made a double takeout to score three points and take a 5-3 lead.

He increased his advantage to 7-3 in the sixth end as Taylor’s takeout attempt crashed off of a guard.

Taylor and his Brandon rink got two points to close to the gap in the seventh but that would be as close as he would get as Forrester ran him out of rocks in the eighth.

“We got a couple of fortunate breaks there in the fifth and those are the moments that you really have to capitalize on,” Forrester said.

“When you get to this level, you are not going to see a million mistakes during the course of a game. You have to take advantage of those opportunities when they come and that’s what we did today.”

Dunbar cruises to title

The championship contest was decided in just four ends on Sunday afternoon as Cale Dunbar’s Riverview rink defeated Kelly Marnoch’s Carberry squad by a score of 8-1.

Dunbar – who is joined on his team by third Shayne MacGranachan, second Kyle Sambrook and lead Chris Campbell – had already clinched his spot at the Viterra at a qualifier in Rivers last month.

“Any time that you can string a few wins together and gain some extra confidence going into the provincials, that’s a huge boost for everybody,” Dunbar said.

“We anticipate being a lower seed at the Viterra, but who knows, maybe we can surprise somebody out of the gates.”

Dunbar reached the championship game with a 10-4 semifinal triumph over Stewart, which wrapped up in seven ends after Dunbar stole six points.

Marnoch qualified for the final with a 6-5 extra end over Irwin.

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