3 November 2023
Korea to meet Japan in Pan Continental women’s final
Korea beat Canada by 8-4, while Japan were 10-8 winners over United States – after an extra end – in Friday evening’s women’s semi-finals, to set up a repeat of last year’s final on Saturday morning.
Before that, United States and Canada will play for bronze on Friday afternoon, a match-up which is also a repeat from last year.
In the game between Korea and Canada, Korea scored singles in the second and fourth ends to take the early advantage, and the Koreans led all the way to the seventh end when a hit for three by Canada skip Kerri Einarson brought her team level at 4-4.
After this, a double take out by Korea’s Gim Eunji gave her team two points from the eighth end for a 6-4 lead. They then had a further steal of two in the ninth, when Einarson’s final draw was heavy, giving Korea an 8-4 lead. The Canadians then ran out of stones in the tenth.
After this win, Korean skip Gim said, “we knew it was going to be a difficult game, we just took one step at a time, and we achieved the win – we feel really great about it. We tried to calm ourselves down and not get too overly-excited. We kept our posture down, we kept our mentality down, and that’s why we eventually got the win.”
Extra end thriller
In the game between Japan and United States, Japan gave up a steal of two in the first end. Despite that, Japan managed to fight back and had a 5-3 lead at the fifth-end break. After the break, a well-judged draw by American skip Tabitha Peterson produced a score of three to bring her team back into the game, with a 6-5 lead. Eventually, in the tenth end, a double take out by Fujisawa Satsuki produced a score of two to tie the game at 8-8 and force an extra end.
In the extra, the Americans could not remove a Japanese stone on the button and gave up a steal of two to hand Japan a 10-8 win.
Afterwards, Japan’s Fujisawa said, “my last shot in the first end was not good and we gave up a steal, but we tried to stay positive and trust in ourselves, and it was exciting in the end.” And looking forward she said, “we lost against Korea in the round-robin, but our condition has been getting better since then, so it will be a good game.”
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