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                                                  THE PRINCE GEORGE
 CITIZEN
 Quints
 MICHAEL CAMP rj                                 I I informati
   February 8, 2014 I 2pm at Vanier Hall
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THE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2014
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PRINCE
GEORGE
CITIZEN
British Columbia alternate skip Patti Knezevic watches her shot during her match against Ontario at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts Tuesday in Montreal.
    Prince George's Patti Knezevic pulls emergency duty to help Team B.C. stay in Scotties hunt
Bill BEACON and Andrea JOHNSON
The Canadian Press and Citizen staff
ONTREAL—Kesa I Van Osch’s British 1 Columbia team I feels good now I about their choice of veteran Patti Knezevic to serve as alternate at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
  With Van Osch out with a flu bug that has been rampaging through the tournament, Knezevic stepped in to lead B.C. (4-3) to a pair of victories on Tuesday before 1,131 at the Maurice Richard Arena.
  B.C. downed Allison Flaxey’s Ontario (1-4) team 7-3 in the morning draw and then saw Knezevic draw
to the button with her final stone to beat Sarah Koltun (1-5) of Yukon 8-7 in the afternoon.
  “We wanted someone with a lot of experience as our fifth player because we’ve watched the Scotties for years and this happens [often] that the flu goes around,” said B.C. third Stephanie Baier. “We wanted someone who could come in at any position so we wouldn’t have to shuffle around and we’d stay at our comfort level.”
  Knezevic became the first Prince George curler to compete in the Scotties Tournament of Hearts since Diane Dalio appeared at the national championship in 1994.
  Dalio and her team of third Donna Gervais, second Rae Ann Schou-wenburg (nee Copeland) and lead Lorraine Flannigan finished with a round-robin record of 6-5 in Kitch-
ener, Ont., but failed to advance to the playoffs.
  The illness kept six players out of Tuesday’s morning draw, when Saskatchewan’s Stefanie Lawton (4-1) downed Quebec (1-6) 8-4 with only three players on her team.
  Van Osch was the lone player missing in the afternoon, but then her lead Carley Sandwith had to quit after two ends, leaving them with only three.
  B.C.’s young squad from Victoria looked to be in trouble when they started the tournament at 2-3 and it only looked worse when Van Osch went down.
  But gritty work by a relatively healthy Baier and second Jessie Sanderson and Knezevic’s steady hand put the team back in the hunt for a playoff spot.
  When Team Van Osch won the
B.C. provincial championship last month in Prince George to earn their first trip to the Scotties, they immediately asked Knezevic to be their fifth player.
  “It was an unexpected call, for sure,” said Knezevic, who made it to the B.C. final three times but had never got to the Scotties. “I was very honoured.
  “I was just hoping that I could bring a bit of experience and support and be able to step in if needed.”
  Baier said that if Van Osch is able to play today she will return as the skip and that Knezevic would go back to being the alternate.
  If Sandwith can’t play, Knezevic will play lead.
  “We decided as a team that I would play wherever a player stepped out of, so no situation would be a surprise to us,” Knezevic said.
“We knew going in that Carley was not well and she’d give it her best shot.
  “Then we just had to make the transition. The girls have been great. We were trying to be as positive as we could and work together with what we had. I think that was the ticket.”
  When a team has only three players, the first two throw three stones each and the skip throws two. It means that most of time, only one player can sweep.
  It wasn’t easy for B.C., as 20-year-old Koltun scored two in the ninth to take a 7-6 lead, then left Knezevic with a tricky draw for two in the 10th. Baier jumped in at the end to help Sanderson in some furious sweeping to get the winning rock to the button.
                                                                                                                                                                                               —see BUG, page 12
Blaze hits home for fire chief
Peter JAMES Citizen staff pjames@pgcitizen.ca
  Jeanne Boucher was at work at Callaghan’s store in Bear Lake on Monday morning when she got word of a house fire in the small town about 70 kilometres north of Prince George.
  As chief of the community’s volunteer fire department, Jeanne expects to receive those calls but this one was different.
  It was her home that was on fire.
  Jeanne quickly alerted her deputy to sound the alarm and then rushed home to find that a chimney fire had spread to the ceiling and was
beginning to consume the entire mobile home.
  Her stepson was the only one home at the time and he was able to get out of the building in time, along with the family dog.
  Jeanne and others on the scene tried to get water on the blaze, but to no avail.
                                                                                                                                                          — see BOUCHER, page 3
 Today's Weather
 Hi -16° Low -28°
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