Team Clark wins State Mixed again; will head to US Mixed Nationals

February 10, 2013 - 12:45pm -- Tom FitzGerald

Brady Clark and his wife Cristin (Lynnwood, WA) have won more national championships curling together (12) than any other duo in the history of United States Curling. They will look to add another title to that list in 2013, as they will represent the State of Washington at the 2013 US Mixed Curling Championships, March 16-23 in Wilmar, Minnesota.

On Monday, February 4th at Seattle's Granite Curling Club (http://www.curlingseattle.org/) Team Clark (Brady Clark, Cristin Clark, Philip Tilker, Bev Walter, Sharon Vukich) earned the right to play at Nationals by winning the 2013 Washington State Mixed Curling Championship over Team Sieg ( Lyle Sieg, Miyo Konno, Steve Lundeen, Jennifer Westhagen) 11-3. As the skip, or captain of the team, Brady Clark has now won the State Mixed Championship every year since 2001, an amazing run of 13 straight years. Brady and Cristin have won the last four US Mixed National Championships, and 9 times in the last 10 years. This will be the 11th Mixed Nationals appearance for Bev Walter. Tilker will be looking to win his 5th Mixed National Championship.

The Clark rink finished the tournament with a record of 4-1 and had to win 2 straight games over Sieg to claim the championship title. After both teams started 2-0 in round-robin play, Team Sieg defeated Team Clark 7-6 on Sunday morning, with Sharon Vukich taking over for Cristin Clark who was out with the flu. That forced a tiebreaker in the double-elimination tournament, which was played on Sunday at 1PM. Despite being ill, Cristin Clark was able to come back to play in that game, and it came down to the last shot. With Team Sieg holding a 1 point lead in the final end, Team Clark was faced with a tough situation and needed a miraculous shot to stave off elimination. With Sieg's shot rock buried at the top of the four-foot behind guards, Brady Clark's only option was a very risky angle runback of his own rock that was outside the house on the left side of the sheet. It was a steep angle, but he made the shot perfectly to get two points and the 6-5 win. That set up another do-or-die game on Monday at noon , and Team Clark put the game away when Sieg's final shot in the 7th end came up a bit short, giving Clark a steal of 2 points. The teams shook hands after Clark stole 4 more points in the 8th end for the 11-3 final score.

Team Ikegami (Kris Ikegami, Thomas Brandt, Jiyoung Lee, Jon Ikegami) finished the State Mixed Championship with a record of 1-3 and Team Lyttle (Paul Lyttle, Christie Wilhelmy, Benj Guzman, Amy Towillis) finished at 0-3. A complete recap including linescores and rosters can be found at http://curlingseattle.org/competitions?event=2013StateMixed