By Mitchell Fox
The Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) Bold women’s curling team showed their might when it mattered as they played their way to a bronze medal at the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Championships this past weekend.
With the third-place finish, the Bold also earned themselves a trip to the U Sports National Championships which will be hosted in Sudbury, Ont., from March 15-19.
They will be one of three OUA teams at the event, alongside the OUA gold medal-winning McMaster Marauders and silver-medalists, the Laurentian Voyageurs, who are hosting the national event.
After a loss to the Laurier Golden Hawks in the quarter-finals last year following a 4-0 record in group play, the Bold came into this year’s competition seeking redemption. After a 7-1 record in OUA tournaments this season, the squad was feeling hungry and confident.
While they knew the competition was going to be tough, the team believed they could give any competition a run for their money—which is what they did.
On top of making their way through a group stage that required taking on four teams that finished with .500 or better records, the Bold won three one-point games in the last two days of the tournament, taking Guelph, Waterloo and Queen’s down to the wire.
The squad started their tournament on Feb. 3 with a 10-7 victory over the Western Mustangs followed by a 6-4 loss to the Trent Excalibur.
Carrying a 1-1 record into Saturday, the team needed to come up big against two teams with considerably larger curling programs—Guelph and Waterloo. After defeating Guelph 6-5, they found themselves on the wrong side of a lopsided game against the Warriors, which resulted in a 9-2 defeat.
A 2-2 record coming out of group play proved to be just enough for the Bold to qualify for the playoff rounds, entering as the eighth seed.
In the quarter-finals, they once again faced the Warriors, who finished the group stage with four one-sided victories. However, the TMU women flipped the script, managing to hold onto a 5-4 win despite Waterloo’s best attempts in the seventh and eighth ends.
TMU’s run for gold was cut short when they lost 6-4 to the Laurentian Voyageurs in the semi-finals. While the match started slow, it gave way to an exciting last three ends, with Laurentian scoring three in the final end.
The result meant a banner was out of the cards but a chance to take on the Queen’s Gaels for the bronze medal, as well as a U Sports nationals berth, was still a big opportunity. The two teams traded ends early, but the seventh end would turn the tables in TMU’s favour en route to a 6-5 victory.
Fourth-year lead Jessica Filipcic was named an OUA First Team All-Star for her play in the tournament, a title she also earned last year.
Clutch play in critical moments and consistency proved valuable for the Bold, who finished with a score differential of 37-45 but won more games than they lost.
With the 9-2 loss to Waterloo as an outlier among close games, the team is happy with their journey to a medal. It was their first since 2016-17 when the team won silver at the OUAs and qualified for U Sports nationals in only their second year of competition.
After seven games in three days, the Bold women will move onto a new segment of their season. The U Sports championships are a little over a month away, so they will continue training hard, practicing multiple times a week and playing in a club league at the Toronto Cricket Skating and Curling Club.
The TMU men’s curling team will hope to follow suit with their women’s curling counterparts when they head to the OUA Championships at the Peterborough Curling Club this weekend. They’ll kick off the tournament with a 9 a.m. matchup against the Waterloo Warriors on Feb. 10.
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