To advance to provincials, Michael Dahms will need some home-ice magic.
Dahms and his Prince George Golf and Curling Club rink posted a 1-2 record at an interior playdown in Kamloops on the weekend. The 16-team event was the first of two qualifiers for the men's curling provincial championship, Feb. 7-13 in Vernon. The next interior playdown is Jan. 14-16 in Prince George.
In Kamloops, Dahms fell well short of taking one of the two provincial berths. Two more spots will be available at the January gathering in P.G.
Dahms and his crew of J.T. Blanchett, Chris Calder and Matt Gyorfi got off to a great start at the weekend playdown. In a Friday game, they beat Lance McGinn of Kelowna 8-7, a welcome result considering the game was the first they had played together all season.
"We were pretty happy to come out of the gates like that," said Dahms, who has been working in Edmonton and had therefore been unable to practice and play with his rinkmates. "We were hoping we'd get on a roll but it just didn't happen."
In their next two games, both on Saturday, Dahms and company lost 11-4 to Vernon's Aron Herrick and 9-3 to Creston's Josh Firman. In the setbacks, Dahms said he and his teammates had trouble adjusting to the ice conditions.
"The lack of (playing together) obviously was the biggest part, but we got fooled," he said. "Ice conditions changed from the first draw to the second draw. We had gotten used to that (Friday) speed and then we came out the next game on Saturday morning and it was quite a bit faster and we didn't pick up on that speed until we were down."
In the loss to Herrick, Dahms surrendered two points in the first end and then gave up steals of two in the second and third ends and was quickly behind 6-0. The teams shook hands after eight ends.
Against Firman, Dahms trailed just 4-3 at the fifth-end break but Firman used the hammer to score three points in the sixth. Dahms was forced to get aggressive and Firman managed to steal single points in each of the next two ends.
The Herrick rink, with former Prince George resident Tobin Senum at third, compiled a 4-0 record and claimed the first berth in provincials. The second berth went to Vernon's Darin Heath, who defeated two-time world champion Rick Folk 8-4 in Sunday afternoon's B final.
Originally, the Dahms rink, for logistical reasons, had not planned on entering the Kamloops playdown. But, finally getting some game action was important. Dahms said the team is now more prepared for the January bonspiel in Prince George.
"It would have been a shocker for us to play our first event and our only event in Prince George," he said. "All the guys on our team, we realize it was valuable for us to come down here. It was kind of a marker to see where we're at.
"The team will be practicing in Prince George and I'll keep throwing in Edmonton and then I'll be back for a week or so at Christmas and we'll throw then."
