Stoughton finds his groove as semifinals set – Winnipeg Free Press (subscription) Online Edition
Sun Jan 8 2006
By Chris Cariou
LIFE hasn’t exactly been easy for Jeff Stoughton and his team since their Olympic dream fell through with an 8-7 loss to Newfoundland’s Brad Gushue at the 2006 Canadian Olympic Curling Trials.
But the 1996 world champion and his squad of Jon Mead, Garry Vandenberghe and Steve Gould (plus fifth Don Harvey, who played yesterday) have overcome their losing lethargy, advancing to today’s semifinals of the 2006 BDO Classic Open with a 10-3 laugher over Saskatoon’s Brad Korte at MTS Centre last night.
Stoughton will take on defending BDO champion and 2002 Olympic silver medallist Kevin Martin in one semi while defending world champion Randy Ferbey, also of Edmonton, plays Calgary’s John Morris in the other. Martin edged Petersfield’s Dave Boehmer 7-6, Ferbey dumped Pierre Charette 10-4 and Morris beat Pat Ryan 10-7 in the other quarter-finals.
“The first couple of games, I don’t think any of us felt like playing that much,” Stoughton said. “But now that we’re here and things are starting to turn around, it’s not too bad. We’re getting into the groove.”
Stoughton said a lot of his team’s sluggishness had to do with the Hangover from Halifax. “Even at work after, it was a pretty quiet cubicle I was in the day I got home from the Trials; I don’t think anybody wanted to come near me,” said the skip, who admitted getting up for this event was “really tough. We threw rocks for six or seven days before the event and we came out here and we were just blah. It wasn’t very pretty.
“It wasn’t that we weren’t trying or anything like that, it’s just that we were sort of joking around and throwing them up and down… But I’m glad we’re playing. We were fortunate to get in at 2-2 but we just look at last year, Ferbey lost the final at 2-2 to get in so hopefully we can get there as well.”
Many are saying Ferbey and Martin are on a crash course towards tonight’s final, which would be a repeat of last year’s that Martin won. While Stoughton is only 2-5 vs. Martin since 2003, and Morris is a horrible 1-13 against Ferbey and hasn’t beaten his Alberta rival since 2003, Stoughton and Morris are both playing well.
“We’ll give it another go,” said Morris. “Our record’s not too good but that’s why we play in these things. We’ll get to him one of these days.”
Martin said Boehmer gave him all he could handle. He had only two seconds left on his time clock while Boehmer had just 33 seconds left when the Petersfield skip’s final shot, a draw, slid too far to give Martin the two points that handed him the victory.
“We won’t be overlooking Jeff,” Martin said. “He did beat us in the trials. It’s going to be a great game. It’ll be tight. Jeff looks like he’s making everything right now so it’s going to be tough.”
Boehmer was among a bunch of teams to finish the round-robin at 2-2 and he had to beat Gushue in a tiebreaker, 5-2, to advance to the playoffs. He said it was great beating Gushue but it would have been monumental to have knocked off Martin as well.
“I’m more than happy to be going home with some money ($7,000) but when you have a chance like we did to beat Kevin… it could have been an absolute fantastic tournament even if we went on to the semis and lost, just beating an Olympic qualifying champion (Gushue), we were kind of on a roll.
“That would have been another big name down.” Today’s semifinals — along with an exhibition game between 2006 Canadian and U.S. Olympic teams Shannon Kleibrink of Alberta and Cassie Johnson of Bemidji, Minn. — will be held at noon, with the final to be held at 5 p.m. Sportsnet will broadcast both on a two-hour tape delay basis, at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
© 2006 Winnipeg Free Press. All Rights Reserved.
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