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Watch the inaugural Rock League championship between Shield Curling Club and Typhoon Curling club at 4 p.m. ET.
The first-ever Rock League final is set.
Typhoon Curling Club will take on Shield Curling Club at Toronto’s Mattamy Athletic Centre on Sunday. Live coverage on CBC-TV, CBC Gem and CBCSports.ca begins at 4 p.m. ET.
In the first semifinal, Typhoon earned its spot in the championship with a dramatic victory over Northern United. Shield joined them with a win over Alpine Curling Club.
“It was exciting. There were so many good shots and so many close games,” Typhoon’s Nik Edin said.
Indeed, all three games were tight throughout the first semi, and each entered the final end within two points and up for grabs for either side.
In the men’s game, Northern’s Bruce Mouat nailed a sixth-end runback takeout for a blank to head into the seventh end down 4-3 with hammer — and he needed it. Facing a steal of two with both rocks locked on the back of the button, the Scot threw a perfectly executed angled runback to force a draw-to-the-button tiebreaker.
However, Edin covered the pin on his draw and Northern’s Robin Brydone was heavy on his.
“I said out of my hand it’s all there, so I just hoped we would do nothing and it would probably be decent. Just a light clean at the end and right on the button, so that felt good,” Edin said.
Mouat, meanwhile, seemed to bring his A-game throughout the contest, but ceded the tiebreaker shot to Brydone, who had already thrown multiple draws along that path.
“There was a lot of really good shots from both teams, and pretty exciting to making big shots like that in the first-ever Rock League. So pretty proud of ourselves and we’re not too dejected after losing that one,” Mouat said.
Simultaneously, Typhoon’s Tori Koana secured three with her final stone in mixed doubles to secure the 6-5 victory.
It rendered the women’s match irrelevant — but Anna Hasselborg put the exclamation mark on the session, scoring one with her last for a 4-4 tie. With the match settled, they did not do a tiebreaker.
“On my first, in the last end there, the arena just burst out. With communication being a little bit harder already, we completely mis-swept my first, but that was good because it burst for us and it didn’t matter if I made that,” Hasselborg said.
In the second semi, it all came down to the women’s duel between Alpine’s Alina Pätz and Shield’s Kerri Einarson.
Shield’s Brad Jacobs and his men’s crew pulled out a 7-7 tie with a four in the final end against Alpine’s Joel Retornaz, while their mixed-doubles crew routed Alpine 9-2.
Back on the women’s sheet, Pätz led 4-3 into the final end after Einarson intentionally gave up a steal of one with her last in the sixth to keep hammer. The move paid off when the Canadian scored two with her last, sealing her team’s spot in the final.
“It was a lot of pressure throwing that last rock having all the other players staring at me,” Einarson said. “But I’ve been in the big moments before, I know what it feels like and I was pretty confident.”
Championship Sunday marks the seventh and final day of the adventurous first Rock League season.
Jon Thurston joins CBC Sports to discuss his experience in Rock League and what it’s like competing alongside Olympic-level talent in the new professional league.
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