With apologies in advance, this story will be somewhat unfair to Danielle Inglis’ teammates … because there’s just so much Dani to talk about.

Inglis and Kira Brunton, Calissa Daly and Cassadra de Groot (with coach/alternate Kim Tuck) won Friday night’s Ontario women’s championship title at Dorchester, defeating Carly Howard—daughter of Glenn—8-7 in the final.

With the score tied 2-2 in the sixth end, Inglis threw a perfect freeze into a congested house onto a pair of Howard stones. The 30-year-old Howard tried to follow her down and ticked a guard, unfortunately rolling to a spot where her opponent faced a simple nose hit for a bundle.

The Ottawa skip didn’t miss, and leaped into a 6-2 lead.

That sequence of three stones starts at the 1:37:22 mark here:

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4EjdMA7_Q[/embed]

Howard did well to fight back with a three-banger but the sixth was essentially the ballgame. A 10th-end steal for the Toronto foursome didn’t matter as Team Inglis are off to their first Scotties.

“I am so proud of our team,” Inglis told me. “We’ve worked so hard all season and it’s thrilling to have all of our work pay off.” 

After finishing 3-0 in the triple-knockout round robin, Inglis lost the page 1 vs 2 match 8-3 to Howard. The 35-year-old Inglis then defeated Chelsea Brandwood of Niagara Falls 10-4 in the semifinal.

Inglis has been to the big show before—countless times as a key communications worker for Curling Canada, but also as a coach for Hollie Duncan in 2018 and as alternate for Rachel Homan at the pandemic STOH in 2021. 

Now she’ll battle Homan at the same arena in Calgary, as Homan has a pre-qualified berth into this year’s edition.

(The byes are everywhere this year. In addition to defending champion Kerri Einarson and Homan, Jennifer Jones is also pre-qualified for a berth—and there’s one more to be announced, with the news that Iqaluit won’t be fielding a team.)

Other provincial STOH champions to date include Yukon’s Bayly Scoffin, NWT’s Kerry Galusha, Melissa Adams from New Brunswick, the Heather Smith/Jill Brothers combo from Nova Scotia, and young Skylar Ackerman representing Saskatchewan.

That was a weird 2021 STOH for Inglis. In addition to vast emptiness and cardboard cutout spectators, Alberta legend and ultra-blunt talker Randy Ferbey was the Ontario team coach.

However, Inglis didn’t get a chance to sit beside him game in and game out, as per COVID-19 rules.

As Don Landry wrote at the time, Inglis still enjoyed her interactions with The Ferb.

“He’s got so much knowledge that I just, I was really enjoying absolutely everything he had to say,” she said.

“And, he’s hilarious.”

Inglis then stayed in Calgary after the STOH, to work the Brier (and later the worlds) for Curling Canada-slash-World Curling.

This pic of her disinfecting the WCF interview area is priceless.

Hey, I said it was a weird time.

Danielle’s father, Mark Inglis, was already a columnist for The Curling News (specializing in curling club development, including the building process) when I cajoled his daughter to serve on the Toronto Curling Association board of directors. Although incredibly busy with all things curling, she said yes to the volunteer gig—and outlasted everyone I recruited, including myself.

Then she started kicking butt on the ice. As a former Ontario junior champion she had the talent, and eventually she started appearing in women’s provincials. National and world mixed championship crowns in 2018 probably helped her push harder as a women’s team skip, and sure enough, the results started showing.

She lost last year’s Ontario semifinal to Duncan, and stronger tour results provided this squad with a spot in last September’s PointsBet Invitational.

And here they are, with a skip ready to hit the ice—not the media bench.

“It hasn’t quite sunk in yet,” Inglis admitted. “Just a surreal feeling to have something I’ve been chasing for years finally come to fruition.”

I recall nicknaming Danielle “sunshine” in our TCA meetings, due to her perennially sunny disposition. I don’t know if that stuck, but it should have.

One problem: Who on earth is going to help my disorganized, last-second self when I start texting Curling Canada during the Calgary Scotties, looking for images and quotes and whatnot?

Curling Canada is probably wondering something similar. Those are talented shoes to fill.