Mhairi wins Scottish Wheelchair Championship Silver

02 April 2018

Mhairi wins Scottish Wheelchair Championship Silver

It was great to see that Mhairi Manson had won the Silver Medal at the Scottish Wheelchair Championships at The Peak, Stirling last week.

She's written a very good report of the competition. Congratulations to Mhairi and all her team, pictured above,

Mhairi Manson, Gary Smith, Ted Bidgood, Rosemary Lenton.

"About 5 months ago I was asked to play for Ted Bidgood’s team in the Scottish Wheelchair Curling Championships at The Peak in Stirling. I jumped at the chance, not having a club at Ayr this was a great opportunity to play with and against top level curlers.

The competition started at 10am on the 27th March 2018 and would run for the next three days. I hoped I would not let my team or myself down, as I have never played at this level before.

In the first game we lost heavily to a team from Stranraer, however my team who consisted of Ted Bidgood (Skip), Rosemary Lenton (Third), Gary Smith (Second) with Myself as lead, said not to worry as this was the first game and with round robin competitions it was not a disaster. We had never played together before and needed a game to gel together.

Over the next three days we played teams from Northern Ice in Newcastle, Stirling, Stranraer and Hamilton. Luckily we bonded so well, played to our strengths we won all the remaining round robin matches. Due to other results in this part of the tournament we qualified for the final.

The team we were facing was Team Gault, who consisted of three different Paralympic medallists and a previous paralimpian. We lost a 3 on the first end, but fought back courageously, getting a one, losing a one. The fourth end the umpire had to measure three stones, all on the button; all touching each other we managed a two. Losing a one at the fifth. Starting the last end we were losing 5-3 and had the hammer. The final end a tense one, we were lying one with the last stone to play, but it kept running and ended up as third shot, we only got one. Losing 5-4.

Scot Wheel Winn18

It was the best and closest final in memory with a standard of curling worthy of any international match. Ted Bidgood stated that playing a team of four paralympians who have played together for 4/5 years, and taking them to the final stone was epic. We played our hearts out and came so close."

 

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