HEAD: 
Curlers hit and miss

SUBHEAD: 
Men undefeated, women drop one

CUTLINE #1 (list slug of photo): 1003crlw1
Team NWT men's curling skip Colin Miller of 
Yellowknife fires a stone down the ice, to be swept by vice-skip Matthew Whitford of Yellowknife and second Reiss Kruger of Hay River. Lead David Aho of Yellowknife held the broom. As of 
Wednesday, the team was undefeated after four matches.
Chris Woodall/NNSL photo



BYLINE: 
by Chris Woodall
Northern News Services
Homer, Alaska

TEXT: 
	<P>
If crushing rocks makes big stones smaller, NWT's men's curling squad made sand of Yukon in the March 8 afternoon game at the Arctic Winter Games.
</P>

<P>
	They started an avalanche of stones early, throwing four points on the board in the first end and stealing four more in the second for a total of eight with eight ends left to play. 
</P>

<P>
	Despite a bit-by-bit rally by Yukon, the NWT foursome of Colin Miller (skip, age 14, from Yellowknife), Matthew Whitford (vice-skip, 14, Yellowknife), Reiss Kruger (second, 14, Hay River) and David Aho (lead, 12, Yellowknife) finished the game up 13-8.
</P>

<P>
	The foursome were the only undefeated men's team after three days with a 4-0 record. 
</P>

<P>
	There was one end, however, where the crushing could have gone the other way. Today is the finals. 
</P>

<P>
	Yukon had been chipping back to be behind 10-4 at the end of the seventh end and with seven stones from both teams in play in front of the house and several Yukon-only stones in it, forced NWT to do some scrambling in the eighth end. 
</P>

<P>
	Both skips showed they were ready for the challenge.
</P>

<P>
	Whitford's last shot did a nice Millennium Falcon manoeuvre, dodging the asteroid belt of guards to slide nicely onto the edge of the two-foot ring to count as shot rock. 
</P>

<P>
	For once in this end, it was Yukon's turn to worry. Yukon skip Thomas Scoffin tried to follow Whitford's example, but did an Evil Empire, crashing his stone onto his own guard at the top of the house. 
</P>

<P>
	He got another chance for his last shot and made a beauty worthy of a Brier final..
</P>

<P>
	Bumping his own team's rock back to chip out the NWT shot rock and leave Yukon sitting with five potential points. 
</P>

<P>
	But Miller had last shot and used it well in difficult circumstances, going for a bounce in from the outside right of the house. It wasn't quite enough to take the end, but only gave Yukon two points instead of the five.
</P>

<P>
	"That was hectic," Miller said after the game. NWT had to settle down.
</P>

<P>
	"It frustrated us because we were missing shots," skip Miller said. A team time-out helped the team regroup. 
</P>

<P>
	"I told them we had to pick it up, think about your shot and take a few seconds in the hack," Miller said. 
</P>

<P>
	The curling team's coach, Gary Hoffman, agreed.
</P>

<P>
	"We had control of the game to start with, but sometimes when you have that big of a lead, you have a bit of a let-down and lose concentration," Hoffman said.
</P>

<P>
	
</P>

<P>
	On the NWT women's curling side, the team of skip Kate Jefferson, 17; vice Carina Sartor-Pietak, 17; with Melissa Weaver, 17, and Megan Cormier, 16 - all from Yellowknife - had a let down when they lost 8-4 to Alaska. 
</P>

<P>
	They ended up the preliminary round with a record of three wins and one loss.
</P>

<P>
	Yesterday the team was to go into the preliminary playoffs against North Alberta, who were 2-2 in games.
</P>