By Eric Welsh
Black Press
A tension-filled final shot highlighted the juvenile men's curling matchup between the Jay Ueda Vancouver-Squamish rink and the Brayden Carpenter Fraser River-Delta rink.
With Ueda up 4-3 in the final end, it came down to the last throw for each team.
First, Ueda came through with a heart-stopping shot that didn't work exactly as planned, but worked nonetheless.
“Plan A was for him to hit a couple red rocks out of the house,” said Ueda's lead, Cullen Quek. “Instead, he only hit one out, but he stuck his own rock in the house and left us sitting two. That left Brayden with a shot that wasn't the hardest to make, but there was a lot of pressure.”
All he had to do was draw his rock left around a gaggle of guards and get onto the button. Everyone watched anxiously as he threw the rock and it scooted down the ice. Gently curling, it was on a perfect line. But the weight was just a tiny bit light, and it came to rest about eight inches shy of where it needed to be.
Ueda, Quek and company held on for a 5-3 win.
“Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump,” Quek said, describing those final seconds. “Near the end we kind of knew it wasn't going to get there, but you never know until the rock stops. Just thump, thump, thump, thump.”
Ueda's 2-2 rink tackles the 1-1 Zane Bartlett foursome from the Kootenays in their next match.
The third draw for the boys is Saturday morning with an 8 a.m. start.