Salo captures Asham Slam

John Salo captured the Asham Slam on Sunday afternoon at the Tarentorus Curling Club by doing it the hard way.

Thunder Bay's Salo stole two points in the tenth end to defeat Sudbury's Mike Jakubo in the final of the $13,000 Asham Slam, the second stop on the Northern Ontario Curling Tour.

For his efforts, Salo received the $4,000 first place prize while Jakubo collected $2,000 as runner-up.

Salo advanced to final with a 7-4 win over the Sault's Al Harnden in the semi-final while Jakubo snuck past the Sault's Greg McLellan 10-8 in the other semi-final.

Harnden advanced to the semi-final with a 9-2 win over Providence Bay's Jordan Chandler in the quarterfinals while McLellan advanced over Blind River's Al Gemmell 5-3.

Another local rink skipped by Al Belec qualified for Sunday's playoffs but fell to Jakubo 5-4 in the quarterfinal draw on Sunday morning.

In the other quarterfinal matchup, Salo beat North Bay's John McClelland 7-3.

Harnden and McLellan each pocketed $1,500 for their semi-final appearances while quarterfinalists Belec, Gemmell, Chandler and McClelland each receive $1,000.

Teams on the NOCT are battling to accumulate enough points to gain a spot into the 16-team Tour championship in April. Points are awarded based on earnings and round robin victories.

With a diverse field of men, women, mixed, juniors and seniors all competing against each other, a gender scale has been developed to even out the points amongst all competitive teams.

The men will remain even while senior men will multiply their points by 1.2, junior men by 1.4, ladies, senior ladies and mixed by 1.7 and the junior ladies by 1.8.

A round robin victory credits a team with 100 points while 1,000 points is gained for every $1,000 earned.

Joining the 20 men's teams in the Asham Slam field were mixed teams skipped by Matt Seabrook, Jeff Brown and Jim Lisk. Women's teams include Elaine Uhryn, Dawn Schwar, Nancy Houle, Brenda Johnston and Jan Pula. Junior teams are skipped by Brad Jacobs and Sandy MacEwan.

The next stop on the Tour is the Rock Curling Company Classic in Sudbury Dec. 3-5.

In the Labatt Classic, the first stop on the Tour in North Bay in October, Sudbury's Mike Jakubo defeated Harnden in the championship game.

The NOCT was formed by Sudbury's Tim Phillips, North Bay's Mark Brown and Englehart's Stephen Chenier.

To visit the NOCT website, click here.

*** LOCAL RESULTS:

The following are the round robin records for all local teams:

Greg McLellan 5-0 Matt Seabrook 1-4 Kevin Rutledge 1-4 Larry Pallot 3-2 Al Harnden 3-2 Brad Jacobs 3-2 Elaine Uhryn 3-2 Ken Graham 3-2 Nancy Houle 1-4 Al Belec 4-1 Les Fleming 2-3