Rachelle Vink of Woodstock competes on team skipped by Julie Tippin
By
Mark Schadenberg
Time
to polish off two stories with one curling stone.
Firstly,
congratulations to Woodstock-area curler Rachelle Vink for qualifying for the
Scott Tournament Of Hearts Ontario women’s championships for consecutive seasons.
While Julie Tippin is the skip, it is terrific to note that the foursome will
again represent the Woodstock Curling Club at the provincials in Cobourg, Jan
30 – Feb 5.
Vink,
who is the daughter of the Vink family owning Woodstock Meadows golf course,
has already tabulated an impressive curling resume including competing at the
Ontario championship bonspiel last year in Brampton. Tippin was tied for second after the round robin at 6-2 with Jenna Hanna and Jacqueline Harrison. In the
3-4 matchup, Tippin lost to Hanna 7-3. The Hanna squad would win the Ontario
title and later compete at the national Scott Tournament Of Hearts – placing in
a tie for fifth at the Grand Prairie Alberta venue.
Vink
was part of a foursome which won three national college banners for Fanshawe
College, including 2015 which also included her Tippin teammate Tess Bobbie on
the rink.
Vink,
who is also a graduate of St. Mary’s High School in Woodstock, said last year
in a Sentinel-Review story that the Woodstock club has always been very
supportive, so the team registers for competitions as a Woodstock-based team.
It’s important to note that qualification brackets are done by geography and
regions so a team must be based somewhere.
The
team of Tippin, Vink (second), Chantal Duhaime (vice), and Tess Bobbie (lead)
advanced to the Ontario round-robin format event by placing second at the West
qualifier Dec 16-19 in Guelph. Of note, the Tippin team trounced Mallory Kean
9-1 in the ‘B’ Final by scoring three with the hammer in the 5th end, stealing one each in both the 6th and 7th ends, and stealing
3 more decisive points in the 8th before shaking hands. If you
recognize the surname of Kean, well you should as Mallory is the wife of Innerkip’s
Mark Kean who is a previous Ontario men’s champion (2015 Ontario Tankard. Kean
was tied for 7th at Brier with a 5-6 record) as skip.
The
Tippin squad was able to advance through the 11-team Guelph (Ontario West) qualifier tournament
by downing Katie Moreau 8-4, and then Mallory Kean 6-5 in the third round.
After losing to Jacqueline Harrison 7-2 in the ‘A’ Final, Tippin then rebounded to defeat Kean in the ‘B’ Final. (Note: All linescores and visual brackets are found on the www.ontcurl.com website)
The
Harrison team of Mississauga is also advancing to Cobourg (Hosted by the West Northumberland
Curling Club at the Cobourg Community Centre) obviously . . . along with skips
Rachel Homan, Sherry Middaugh, Allison Flaxey, Heather Heggestad, Cathy Auld, and
Megan Balsdon. I’m not walking out to the lofty edge here by stating that the
Homan team of Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle must be considered
the overwhelming favourites as they are certainly one of the world’s top ranked
teams. As proof, Homan and Flaxey are second and third respectively on the World
Curling Tour money list for this season.
Tippin’s
team isn’t afraid to travel to find some competition as they lost 4-2 in the
semis of an event in Blaine, Minnesota (Asham U.S. Open) to Sherry Middaugh
back on Jan. 2. They always say in curling that it’s difficult to beat the same
team twice on the same weekend as Tippin had toppled Middaugh 7-2 in the event’s
sixth draw. The on-line sources for this tourney note the purse for a semifinal
loss was $3,025 which doesn’t leave a lot of pocket money after expenses are
doled out.
Tippin
also competed twice in B.C. and also in Manitoba this season already, winning
the championship of the Stroud Sleeman event in October by downing Balsdon 8-6
in the finale, and earlier losing in September in the finals of the K-W Fall
Classic. To better represent the difficulty in winning these major competitions,
Tippin reached the semifinals of the Dekalb Classic in Manitoba, which was a
bonspiel eventually won by Jennifer Jones.
On
the World Curling Tour money list the Tippin squad is currently 31st with $12,425.
As
you can see, Woodstock’s Vink competes constantly against the best curlers so
the team certainly has a good opportunity in Cobourg to win.
MEN’S
PROVINCIALS
The
men’s side of the Ontario spiel – also in Cobourg – includes skips Greg Balsdon (2014 winner), John Epping (In my opinion the best current skip not to win a provincial crowd),
Glenn Howard (A 16-time Ontario champ, including 9 as a skip), Mike Harris (A former Olympian), Cory Heggestad, Scott Bailey,
Mark Bice, Codey Maus, Dayna Deruelle, and representing the Brantford club is
the Wayne Tuck team.
Mark Kean did not qualify for the provincial men’s Tankard
this year – an event which was once sponsored by Labatt’s for a long time and is
now sponsored by Milk (Recharge With Milk)
WHY
ME?
If
you’re curious about why I write on the curling topic, I was part of the Rogers
TV on-air broadcast crew at several provincial championships including Mississauga,
Whitby, Owen Sound, Guelph and naturally Woodstock (twice), seniors provincials
in London, plus the men’s pro curling tour when it stopped in Strathroy a few years
ago.
I’m
a true student of the game and love the strategy.
More
penmanship on curling in an entry later in January.
Me broadcasting at London Knights game
LINKS:
Facebook
& Twitter: @oncurlingchamps
2016
Story:
Mark Schadenberg, Sales
Representative
Senior Real Estate Specialist
(SRES designation)
Royal LePage Triland Realty
Independently Owned & Operated, Brokerage
No comments:
Post a Comment