Make it back-to-back Ontario women’s curling championships for skip Danielle Inglis and her rink, which will now compete at the national Scotties Tournament of Hearts for the second straight year.
Inglis, along with third Kira Bunton, second Calissa Daly and lead Cassandra de Groot also won the provincial tournament a year ago in Dorchester, and clinched this year’s title with an 8-4 victory over skip Chelsea Brandwood on Sunday at the Cobourg Community Centre.
“I don’t know if this one’s set in yet, but it feels incredible. We’ve put in a lot of hard work this season and it’s just unbelievable to have that pay off,” Inglis told Today’s Northumberland. The team narrowly lost its opening game Tuesday before going undefeated in six games the rest of the way.
“We had an okay start and we really just accelerated as the week went on, feeling more comfortable with the rocks, the ice and it was just a good feeling to have.”
Team Brandwood also included third Lauren Horton, second Brenda Chapman and lead Keira McLaughlin. They had to win three games Saturday to advance to Sunday’s final against Team Inglis, which hadn’t played since winning the 1 versus 2 Page playoff game Friday evening.
Inglis stole four points en route to the win. She blanked the first end to keep the hammer and opened the scoring in the second, drawing for one point with Brandwood sitting four.
The first two steals came in the third end. Inglis was sitting three on Brandwood’s final shot, which took out one rock before her own rolled out of play.
In the fourth end, Brandwood took out two to score two and cut the deficit to 3-2. Inglis attempted to blank end five heading into the break, but picked up a point. She then stole a point in the sixth when Brandwood missed an opportunity for two points.
Brandwood scored two in the seventh to trim Inglis’ lead to 5-4.
Inglis scored two in the eighth to restore her three-point advantage and stole one more in the ninth before Brandwood ran out of rocks in the final end.
Inglis and her teammates had a great week in Cobourg.
“I love the town and we had some beautiful snow the whole week here too and found a lot of great restaurants so thank you so much to the city of Cobourg,” she said.
Team Inglis will compete at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts Feb. 14 to 23 in Thunder Bay.
“So excited to be going to Thunder Bay and representing Ontario. There’s a lot of tough teams out there and we’ve been playing them all season and just looking forward to a lot of great games and build on what we learned at our last trip to the Scotties.”
NOTE: Rachel Homan’s rink, which includes Emma Miskew, Tracy Fleury and Sarah Wilkes and is the defending World champion, didn’t compete in Cobourg this week as they are already qualified as Team Canada at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts. This was the second straight year without Team Homan at the provincial competition.
Homan and Miskew won the Ontario championship the last time Cobourg hosted the event in 2017 and went on to win the national Hearts and World championships that year before also representing Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Author: Pete Fisher
Has been a photojournalist for over 30-years and have been honoured to win numerous awards for photography and writing over the years. Best selling author for the book Highway of Heroes - True Patriot Love
