A victory over defending champions Switzerland boosted Scotland’s slender chances of reaching the play-offs at the BKT Tires World Women’s Curling Championship, but they still went through mixed emotions on the fifth day of action in Nova Scotia.
Rebecca Morrison, Jen Dodds, Sophie Sinclair and Sophie Jackson looked to have a tough challenge on their hands in the opening match of the day as Switzerland’s Team Tirinzoni, looked to bounce back after the astonishing 42-match winning streak at World Championships that they had carried into the first half of this event after winning the last four titles, had been ended by hosts Canada the previous night.
Just as several of their encounters have been over the past year, it was always a close encounter, with the Swiss looking as if they had gained the upper hand in the first half, going into the midway break 4-2 up.
The Scots showed tremendous patience on the resumption, however, blanking the next two ends, before a rare mistake from Alina Paetz as she missed an attempted takeout with her team’s last stone at the eighth end provided the opportunity they were looking for and Scottish skip Morrison pounced to make the takeout she needed to score three. 
“We were going for that two in the eighth end and we just happened to get a miss out of them and suddenly had a shot for three so we were absolutely delighted with that,” said Morrison.
“It was a great end played by us so we are really happy that paid off.”
After another blank at the ninth end, the Swiss levelled the match at the 10th end, taking the match into extra time where, under extreme pressure, Morrison produced a perfectly measured takeout with her final stone to secure the 6-5 win.
“That final shot was down the same line as my previous one, so we were pretty confident we’d be able to make it, but there wasn’t much room for error,” Morrison acknowledged.
“It was their shot rock and if we had rolled much then that was it and we wouldn’t have got the win, but we managed to play that shot well as a team and got a carve on it at the end and came away with the win and we were absolutely delighted with that.”
They then had only around an hour and a half to refuel and refocus ahead of their meeting with the USA in which they did well to recover immediately from losing a three at the second end, but they were never quite able to get their noses in front and ultimately went down to a 8-6 defeat.
“Obviously we were really happy to come away with another win today, but finishing the day on a low is a bit of a shame,” said Morrison.
“Unfortunately we got off to a bad start and were chasing the game a bit.
“We did come back straight away but I didn’t start well in that second game.
“These back to back draws can be quite tough and when we went to the extra end in that first match it meant we didn’t have a lot of turnaround but we were just prepared with food beforehand and had something to eat between games and then just got on to the next game.
“We are very much looking forward to getting a bit of extra rest ahead of our one game day tomorrow, though.” 
That match is against Turkiye who have won just two of their nine matches so far and while it would now take an extremely unlikely sequence of results for the Scots to reach the play-offs, they still have every incentive to claim as many wins as possible with vital Olympic qualifying points still up for grabs.
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Scotland Team
Rebecca Morrison
Jennifer Dodds
Sophie Sinclair
Sophie Jackson
Gina Aitken (alternate)
Team Coach Ross Paterson
Olympic Head Coach Greg Drummond
Schedule & Results
Saturday 16 March
Scotland –Norway 6-4
Sunday 17 March
Scotland – New Zealand 6-8
Scotland – Italy 2-8
Monday 18 March
Scotland – Denmark 2-9
Scotland – Sweden 1-8
Tuesday 19 March
Scotland – Korea 3-9
Scotland – Estonia 12-8
Wednesday 20 March
Scotland – Switzerland 6-5
Scotland – USA 6-8
Thursday 21 March
17.00hrs
Scotland – Turkiye
Friday 22 March
12.00hrs (midday)
Scotland – Japan
17.00hrs
Scotland – Canada
Saturday 23 March
14.00hrs
Qualification
20.00hrs
Semi Finals
Sunday 24 March
14.00hrs
Bronze Medal Game
20.00hrs
Gold Medal Game
Images: WCF
