There were no shaky hands, no vibrating knees. With all his years of curling experience, Gord Duplisse simply pushed out of the hack and made the shot.
Duplisse's hit-and-stick for two points gave his Salmon Arm team an 8-6 extra-end victory against Maple Ridge's Kent LaBerge in Saturday's final game of the B.C. Yukon Command Royal Canadian Legion championship.
Playing at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club, Duplisse sent his final rock off a well-worn path down the middle of the sheet and bumped a buried LaBerge stone out of shot position for the win.
"I could see about two inches of that rock," said the 64-year-old Duplisse. "You've got to do something, and the way the ice is, you can't draw down the middle in the slide path. It's just too tough so I thought, 'Well, I'll try this one,' and it worked. I knew it was on -- one good delivery for an old guy. I've been through this lots of times so it's kind of old hat. It's just lucky when you win one once in a while."
The Legion provincial title was the third for the rink and seventh overall for Duplisse. He and his teammates -- third Randy Jenkins, second Eric Breitkreuz and lead John Danks -- qualified for nationals, which will be held in Hudson, Que., in March.
LaBerge forced the extra end when he came up with a deuce in the previous end.
"They had us in trouble a couple of times there, taking a couple points on us and we fought back," said Fred Fox, the third for the LaBerge rink. "I think we played really well to send it into an extra end. The way the extra end went, I don't think it could have been any closer. Force them to throw -- that's all you want to do."
The eight-team championship also featured rinks from Prince George, Terrace, Ashcroft, Vedder/Golden, Cloverdale and Cowichan. The Prince George foursome -- skip Doug Engstrom, third Owen Mathison, second Ken Pratt and lead Gerry Loreth -- finished with a 1-2 record. The Engstrom crew beat Cowichan 6-1, fell 9-3 to Vedder/Golden and dropped a 7-6 heartbreaker to Maple Ridge. In that game, Engstrom was an inch short on a hit-and-roll to the button that would have resulted in an extra end.
Earlier, in the second end, Engstrom had a chance for three but LaBerge dug himself out of trouble and took one.
"I was really pleased with the way we curled," Loreth said.
"It's the first time I've ever curled with [Engstrom] and he's really easy to curl with. [The tournament] was a lot of fun."
