Martin adds provincial senior to N.S. masters title

BY JOHN DECOSTE

jdecoste@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

For the second time in her career, Yvonne Martin is the Nova Scotia senior and masters women’s curling champion in the same season.

Martin, who won her third provincial masters title last month in Halifax, captured her fourth senior women’s championship in thrilling fashion Feb. 19 on home ice at the Glooscap Curling Club in Kentville.

Trailing Colleen Pinkney of Truro 9-5 after seven ends of their sudden-death final, the Martin team, with third Julie Morley, second Andrea Saulnier and lead Audrey Dorey, scored one in the eighth and stole two in the ninth to pull to within one, 9-8.

Martin stole another pair in the 10th to win the game and the title when Pinkney came up short on her final draw attempt against two Martin counters.

“I beat her three out of four times, so it was no fluke,” Martin said Wednesday of Pinkney, the event’s top seed who was also runner-up at the Scotties provincial women’s competition. Along with Martin, Pinkney, Virginia Johnson and Judy Burgess were the top seeds in the seniors “and we beat all three,” Martin said.

Martin, who won her first five matches of the competition, captured the A and B draws, beating Pinkney 6-5 in the A final and 11-6 in the B final. She came close to winning the championship outright before dropping a 9-6 decision to Johnson in one of two C draw semi-finals.

Pinkney defeated Johnson 8-5 to advance to the playoffs, where she had to defeat Martin twice to claim the title. Pinkney won the morning match easily by a 10-3 score, but was unable to repeat the performance in the afternoon draw.

Changed her mind

Playing with several different sets of teammates, Martin, now 65, won the provincial senior title in 1999 and again in 2002, captured both the provincial seniors and masters in 2003 and repeated as masters champ in 2004.

Ironically, she had decided to retire from senior (50-plus) competition last year to concentrate on masters (60-plus). She changed her mind when Glooscap won the right to host this year’s senior championship.

“I wouldn’t have entered if it hadn’t been here,” she said. “I had called it quits after last year” when she was runner-up to Penny LaRocque, who won her fifth provincial senior title before retiring from competition herself.

Martin said while it’s always nice to curl on home ice in front of friends and family, “it’s not really an advantage because there’s more pressure curling at home.”

Martin had less than 24 hours between the end of the Maritime Masters competition in Summerside (where she finished fourth in a strong field with two wins and three losses) and the start of the senior Feb. 14.

She said she felt a bit tired at the start of the senior event, but the fatigue soon left as she got into the heat of the competition. “I was amazed at how well I felt,” she said. “My first game with Colleen (in the A final); it was pretty much shot-for-shot. The second game we scored a four-ender that allowed us to win fairly easily.”

‘Great way to go out’: Martin

In the final, Martin and her team were curling well, scoring three in the second and two in the fifth, but Pinkney appeared to gain an insurmountable advantage with three in the sixth and a steal of one in the seventh for a 9-5 lead.

Martin made what she felt were two of her best shots of the competition with her two rocks in the 10th, leaving Pinkney a tough draw that she was unable to convert.

Martin was pleased with the victory, both for her and her teammates, including Dorey who was the lead on Martin’s 1999 senior championship team (and last year’s provincial runners-up) as well as this year’s Masters champions.

“It’s a great way to go out (of the seniors competition),” she said, “and especially to be able to win both in the same year, which I was also able to do in 2003.”

With the win, Martin advances to the Canadian senior championship March 22-30 in Prince Albert, SK. Immediately following that, it will be on to Nanaimo, BC for the Canadian Masters competition beginning March 30, the day the senior competition ends.