The Shypitka rink lost a close game in the B.C. senior men’s curling championship final over the weekend in Trail, losing a 5-2 decision to a team headed by Craig Lepine out of Langley.
The two teams were tied up at 2-2 going into the ninth end, however, Lepine managed to score a devastating triple, which ended the game.
“My last rock, I was trying to play a double, to play two, buried, to steal possibly two points that end,” said Tom Shypitka, “but my rock over-curled about an inch, inch and a half, and left him an easy shot for three—and I didn’t really see the possibility of that even happening.”
It was a tough loss for the team to swallow, after playing to a respectable record of five wins and two losses in the round robin.
Cranbrook’s Shypitka skipped the squad, with Nelson’s Fred Thomson as third, Trail’s Don Freschi as second and Fruitvale’s Bill King as lead.
Team Shypitka’s round robin record pitted them against Myron Nichol, a team from the host club in Trail, in the semifinal, but the Cranbrook skip prevailed with a 8-4 win that put his team into the championship game.
Lepine’s six wins and one loss over the round robin was good enough to give him an automatic berth into the final.
“They had last rock advantage going into the game, and they used it pretty wisely, played pretty defensively the whole game,” said Shypitka. “They didn’t really give us a chance to get too aggressive; I think they wanted to play it that way.”
This was Shypitka’s first crack at the provincial curling title in the senior level, but he’s already envisioning many more runs with his current teammates in the coming years.
“The team was really happy with what we did and the way they look at it, is that we can win a whole bunch of these things,” Shypitka said. “They really think this is just the beginning of something.”