Nearly everything needs to go your way to make it out of the South.
That was very much not the case for the Oilfields Curling Club’s Mike Libbus rink all weekend at the Glencoe Club at the Southern Alberta Curling Association men’s playdowns.
“The field is always tough there. You always have to play your best to beat those teams made up of the best players out of southern Alberta,” Libbus said. “We thought we did okay and got off to a few bad starts in a few games … We just needed a couple breaks and we would probably still be out there playing.”
Libbus, along with third Dan Petryk, second Brad MacInnis and lead Peter Keenan, saw their provincial dreams put on ice officially in a dramatic 7-6 loss to Airdrie’s Don Delair on Sunday. The Airdrie skip jumped out to a 5-0 lead through two ends before Team Libbus clawed their way back with singles in the eighth and ninth to make it a 6-6 contest.
“We had a hard time matching up our rocks and finally we were comfortable with everyone having the rocks they liked,” Libbus said. “It made a huge difference. We put a lot of pressure on the rest of the game. At the end of it we actually made them draw to the four-foot to win the game.
“Had we made one more shot we might have won that game.”
Team Libbus, provincial qualifiers in 2012, was in win-or-go-home mode in the C-event by virtue of a pair of narrow defeats decided in the final ends to open the playdowns.
Calgary Curling Club’s Chad Dahlseide squeaked by Libbus 7-6 in the opening draw on Friday by picking up a single in the tenth end.
Robert Collins from the Calgary/North Hill curling clubs then edged the Diamond Valley skip 7-4 in the B-event.
Facing elimination in the C-event brought the best out of the foursome.
“The approach is just one game at a time,” Libbus said. “Sometimes you get there and start looking ahead and you think you’ve got a good draw or maybe you don’t.
“We got to the C early and figured we have to go one game at a time, one end at a time and see what happens.”
The Black Diamond rock chuckers earned their lone win of the weekend in decisive fashion, picking up a pair of two enders to sweep by Calgary’s Rob Johnson by an 8-2 score.
“We caught onto the ice real quick, maybe faster than they did, and put a lot of pressure on them,” Libbus said. “We got off to a good start and that was probably the difference in winning that one and the other ones.”
The Southern qualifiers were Airdrie’s Brent Bawel, Lethbridge’s Kevin Park and Calgary’s Kevin Yablonski.
Libbus, the manager of the Oilfields Curling Club, will switch his attention to teaching the roaring game in the coming weeks. Oilfields boasts two juvenile teams headed up by Jacob Libbus and Jared Palanuik, respectively, competing at districts Jan. 22-24 in Airdrie.
The field also includes reigning provincial champion Michael Steele of Okotoks, the third for Team Smith, as well as Okotokian skips Cailen Knopp and Hunter Kish.
For more information go to saca.ca/playdowns.
