Halifax Heroines Into Olympic Curling Trials Final

HALIFAX – Christina Black, a dark horse favourite competing in her hometown, defeated Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson 6-3 to advance to the best-of-three championship final series at the Canadian Olympic Curling Trials against tournament favourite Rachel Homan.

Black’s Halifax five-player squad pulled off the victory over the four-time Scotties national champion Einarson, who struggled with her shotmaking late in the match.

Much of the game was a cautious, low-scoring affair. 

Team Black were looking decent in the eighth end with a couple of stones in scoring position, but the decision was made to go conservative, leading to a blank. 

Things then got wild in the ninth end. Aggressive play from Team Black coupled with misses from Val Sweeting and Einarson left Black with a hit for three and a 6-3 lead, the first multiple score of the match. 

The partisan Scotiabank Centre crowd exploded in joy, with the family of Colleen Jones also celebrating in a suite above the ice surface.

For Atlantic Canadians, the unexpected victory took some of the sting out of seeing Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brad Gushue miss a shot for the playoffs the previous evening.

It was Black’s first win over Einarson in nine attempts, with five of those losses coming since November of 2024 – and the most recent being a 12-5 drubbing in last Saturday’s opening draw. 

Few pundits picked Black to reach the Trials final – but one who did was TCN columnist Mike Fournier.

“My emotional, dark horse pick for the week is Christina Black,” Fournier wrote before the event kickoff. “I have seen this Halifax team a lot on tour, I feel like they have been grinding and working harder to get to the next level and have been showing a ton of game and grit at the past few Scotties. 

“As a fan, I love teams that play with passion and wear their hearts on their sleeves.”

Fournier also correctly picked Black’s opponent in the final as well as Einarson as third-place finisher.

The best-of-three finale to declare Canada’s women’s fours team for the Milano-Cortina Olympic Winter Games starts on Friday.

Black did score an extra-end win over Homan at the 2023 national championship, but Homan has won six straight head-to-head games since then, with a combined score of 50-21.