Team Barr's Great Win!

To win a national championship needs hours of dedication and practice as well as talent and aptitude.  The demands of curling at this level are far higher than the rest of us are capable of - especially when you are skipping the team and playing last stones.  When you add to the mix a crowd of 300 or so in the hall, with all the effects that can have on the playing surface, TV lights blaring in our face, TV cameras with little red lights staring at you as you slide out, stone in hand - when you add all of that to the mix, then you know what the word "pressure" means.

Kerry skipped her team with aplomb.  In the official statistics that Bob Kelly and I were given end-after-end, she consistently threw two perfect stones.  She ended the game on 96% - an astonishing performance - truly world-class, and the best score of the day in either final by quite a significant margin.  To put this into perspective, she threw eighteen stones; two of them or were ever-so-slightly less than perfect - only 80%, instead of 100%.

You always feel sorry for the losers - so near, yet so far.  Hannah Fleming (an occasional sub in C&B games as I know to my cost!) looked out of sorts and Kerry looked the part.  She called the game calmly and was in complete charge.  Team Barr never looked back when the hammer switched hands in the second end; Hannah overthrew an out-turn take out in an attempt to blank and keep the hammer.  From then on it was score twos and force ones.  There was one wee hiccup in the sixth end when team Barr gave up a two, but other than that - well it was one way traffic.

Brilliant performance by all four girls and Kerry brings much credit to C&B! 

Kerry Barr, Rachael Sims, Rhiann Macleod, Barbara McPake and coach Keith McLennan

(Photo courtesy of Tom Brydone and the Royal Caledonian Curling Club)