Tuesday 27 February 2018

Team Kesley are the new Scottish Senior Ladies Curling Champions!

What a fabulous performance last weekend by Susan, Fran Stretton, Vicky Gumley and Morna Aitken in the Scottish Senior Ladies Curling Championship at Braehead.  Regular readers will remember that team Kesley carried all before them, including a fair few top men's teams, when winning the senior competition in Dumfries.  They carried on their rich vein of form at Braehead; indeed they went through the weekend undefeated - a dominating and satisfying way to win a national championship.

Having won their section, they faced the difficult task of beating the former World Champion rink skipped by Christine Cannon (normal skip Jackie Lockhart was out in South Korea for some reason!); our own Isobel Torrance was playing in the team.  After a tight start a score of two, followed by a stolen two in ends four and five calmed the frayed nerves and set the team up for the final against Margaret Robertson and her Borders rink.  Here's the report on the final, loosely lifted from the Royal Club (or should that be Scottish Curling?) website.

Team Robertson took an early 1-0 lead after the first end.  In the second end, team Kesley had one lonely stone and were looking potentially in trouble before third Fran Stretton played a lovely hit and roll.  This led to a score of two before following up with dominant steals of two in the third and fourth ends. Team Robertson managed to create a guddle in the fifth end to take a two and stay in contention.

Team Kesley responded in the sixth end when skip Susan played her final stone, sneaking past a guard to score another two and take a commanding 8-3 lead in the game.  That was enough for Margaret Robertson, who felt that the mountain was too hard to climb and shook hands.

Well done Susan, Fran, Vicky and Morna!  They go on to represent Scotland in the World Ladies Championship in Ostersund, Sweden from 21-28 April.  They had better start saving their pennies, by the way; Sweden ain't cheap!

Team Kesley
Scottish Senior Champions 2018

From left: Morna Aitken (lead), Vicky Gumley (second),
Fran Stretton (third) and Susan Kesley (skip)

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