B.C. brings the heat!

Team Brown has British Columbia in the playoff hunt at the 2025 Scotties

They had some of the most noteworthy travel challenges in getting to the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, which is no small achievement considering some of the travails other teams endured.

But based on its first five games, British Columbia’s Team Corryn Brown is playing like a team that breezed into Thunder Bay, ahead of schedule and relaxed.

Brown and her Kamloops crew — vice-skip Erin Pincott, second Sarah Koltun, lead Samantha Fisher, alternate Kristen Ryan and coach Jim Cotter — improved to 4-1 Monday night at the Fort William Gardens with a 10-3 win over Nunavut’s Team Julia Weagle (0-4; Iqaluit).

It’s the best start through five games for a Brown-skipped team at the Scotties; she was 3-2 at the same point in her first two appearances, 2020 and 2021, and 2-3 last year.

“Is it? I don’t pay attention to that,” said a smiling Pincott, who along with Brown and Fisher claimed gold at the 2013 Canadian Under-20 Championships (Pincott’s partner Matt Dunstone won the men’s title that year). “It’s always nice to have a crooked number in the win column. It feels a little less daunting when you get to the back end of the week, but we do know that we’ve got some great teams ahead of us, so we’re trying not to lose sight of one thing at a time.”

The B.C. crew was supposed to arrive in Thunder Bay late Wednesday night, but didn’t actually get here until the wee hours of Friday morning. The team was at the arena a few hours later for practice and then on the ice that night for its Scotties opener, an 11-4 win over Alberta’s Team Selena Sturmay (Edmonton).

Monday night’s victory put B.C. firmly in the hunt for one of the three available playoff berths from Pool A, where reigning Scotties and world champ Team Rachel Homan of Ottawa continues to set the pace with a perfect 4-0 record, with B.C. just behind at 4-1, and three teams knotted for third place with 3-2 records.

“I think we’ve just been building on kind of what we’ve been working on all season,” said Pincott. “I think we’ve come in with a pretty solid game plan and so far we’ve been executing and stringing some shots together.

“We’ve had a really solid start to this calendar year with the final appearance in our first event of the year (the Crestwood Platinum Anniversary Showdown in Edmonton) and then provincials (where the team posted an 8-1 record), so it kind of feels like we’re just picking up where we left off.”

B.C. jumped out to an early lead, taking one in the first and then stealing two more in the second, and then took control in the fifth with another stolen deuce to go up 6-2 at the fifth-end break, and added a steal of three in the sixth to put the game out of reach.

There are four wins in the bank and three games left in pool play, but, noted Pincott, there’s still work to do — both on the ice and between the ears as the team tries to keep its focus only on the next game.

“I think this is something that we’ve definitely been working on this year in particular,” she said. “We’ve really honed in on the mental side of the game, working with our sport psychologist Tracey Bilsky. We really need to be in the moment, a one-shot-at-a-time kind of thing, and it’s something that we’ve definitely kind of focused on this year, for sure.”

In other games Monday night, Team Canada scored three in the seventh end and a deuce in the ninth in a 9-6 win over Saskatchewan’s Team Nancy Martin (3-2; Saskatoon); Northern Ontario’s Team Krista McCarville (Thunder Bay; 1-4) hit the win column with a 10-4 triumph over Alberta’s Team Kayla Skrlik (3-2; Calgary); and New Brunswick’s Team Melissa Adams (2-2; Fredericton) evened its record with an 8-7 extra-end win over Prince Edward Island’s Team Jane DiCarlo (1-3; Crapaud).

Team Sturmay (2-2) had the Pool A bye on Monday night.

The 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts continues Tuesday with draws at 9 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. (all times Eastern).

Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts are available at www.curling.ca/scoreboard/.

TSN and RDS2 will provide complete coverage of the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. CLICK HERE for the complete schedule.

For ticket information for the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, go to www.curling.ca/2025scotties/tickets/.

This story will be available in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/2025scotties/nouvelles/?lang=fr