The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 21

INSIDE: Safin tops Aussie, C2 Phoenix rises, C3 Classified, C8 Editor: Derek Shelly 596-3525 sportsthecitizen.canwest.com fax 726-5830 SECTION THE OTTAWA CITIZEN MONDAY, JANUARY 2005 Ikesm comes true for Maiia rimlk 7" Ottawa curlers Ontario's best BY BRUCE DEACHMAN Vat Si A. 1 ,7 A I TV yb-jp" 'X. I 4irM-' ii JANA CHYTILOVA, FHEOrfAWA CITIZEN Skip Jenn Hanna, representing the Ottawa Curling Club, shows off the Ontario Scott Tournament of Hearts trophy at the Rideau Curling Club yesterday. In a true-life sports fairy tale as unlikely as the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team, the 1951 New York Giants and the Jamaican bobsled team, Jenn Hanna and her Ottawa Curling Club team staved off elimination for eight consecutive games, they made it worth the effort by winning the Ontario women's curling championship yesterday.

In front of a supportive Rideau Curling Club crowd, Hanna and teammates Pascale Letendre, Dawn Askin and Stephanie Hanna defeated Krista Scharf's Thunder Bay foursome 6-4, earning a trip to the national Scott Tournament of Hearts on Feb. 19-27 at St. John's, Nfld. "A dream, a total dream," a jubilant Hanna said afterward. "I can't even tell you if it's sunk in yet." Hanna's team lost four of its first five games in the round-robin, and needed eight consecutive wins for the title, including a 9-5 victory against Chrissy Cadorin's Guelph squad in the semifinal yesterday morning and then the triumph against Scharf.

"We've been on our last life for so long, and, when you know you have nothing to lose, it's not nerve-wracking anymore," Hanna said. "We just went out and curled; that was it. "We knew we had to win. So we decided not to press anymore. We decided to go out and have some fun, do what we do best, and not push it or press.

It seemed to work that way. "My gut feeling said we were going to win (the final)," she added. "There was nothing that was going to stop us, not if we played anywhere close to what we've been playing for the last eight games." Hanna's coach and father, Bob Hanna, said he offered his daughter's team just one piece of advice during the fifth-end break. "It's your time," he said. "Believe.

"I've been saying that since --frKK "1 1 a i we were 1-4. The final began conservatively, with Scharf and teammates Angie Del Pino, expatriate Ottawan Leesa Broder and Laura Armitage accidentally taking one point in the second end, and the two teams trading singles over the next two. The Ottawa curlers scored two in the fifth, and they took a 5-2 lead by stealing a pair in the sixth, when Scharf's attempted runback with her first stone crashed on a guard and her tap-back with her final stone was wide. "That was huge," Hanna said. A tearful Scharf agreed.

"That's what killed us," she said. "I had to make my last shot and I didn't. "We just didn't have it (yesterday). They were on a hot streak, which shouldn't really be on our minds, but maybe it was. I don't know." In the seventh end, Hanna made her most difficult shot of the weekend, raising a guard into the house to remove both a guard and two Scharf It's done.

We're going to win it right and that made me feel a lot better." In the final end, a good draw and a hit left Hanna counting four, and Scharf, without a feasible way to tie the game with her last stone, conceded. "I didn't have anything," Scharf said. "I had to make a quadruple and stick around, and I couldn't see anything." Hanna said she knew the game was won after throwing her last rock. "I knew she didn't have a shot for two. I came halfway down the sheet, and tears started welling up in my eyes and I'm thinking, 'OK, don't cry yet, because she might gave another shot to "Then I looked at Steph, and Steph was crying, and I knew it was over." The semifinal was a onesided affair, with Cadorin playing a similarly poor game to the one she had played in an 11-2 defeat against Scharf in the 1-2 Page playoff on Saturday night.

See HEARTS on PAGE C2 "If we don't make that, it's looking like they could get a three, and that wouldn't have been good," Hanna said. "We'd have gone from being up three to being tied and a totally different game." Scharf wasn't sure Hanna was calling for that shot, "but she happened to hit it absolutely perfect, and that's kind of how our luck was going and how their luck was going." After Scharf's team pulled within 5-4, Hanna had a chance to seal the deal with a ninth-end draw for a deuce, but her rock stopped about six inches short of the intended target. "I was really disgusted with myself for missing that draw," Hanna said. "What was running through my head was, 'In a situation like this, people always come up and chuck it So I said, 'I'm not going to do So I kicked out hard and pulled it back, and, as soon as I let it go, I knew it wasn't there. "But the girls came down afterward and said, 'Who cares? i JANA CHYTILOVA, THE 0 nAWA CITIZEN Thunder Bay skip Krista Scharf reacts to a missed shot on her first rock in the 10th end of yesterday's final.

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