Team Peper, from The Palmetto Curling Club, won the 2012 South Carolina State Curling Championship tonight, defeating the Team Marshall, from The Palmetto Curling Club, by a score of 10 – 4, in a game that was much closer than the score indicates.

Team Peper (pictured Lon Peper, Beau Welling & Alan Shaw) 2012 South Carolina State Curling Champions

Team Marshall (Bill Marshall, Kay Oken, Ryan Smith and Linda Marshall) won the coin toss, and used The Hammer to score one point in the first end.  Team Peper (Lon Peper, Beau Welling, Apryl Rash/Kris Krystyniak, and Alan Shaw) answered with 4 points of their own in the second end.  Team Marshall came back with another point in the 3rd end and Team Peper responded by putting up 2 more points in the 4th end.  Team Marshall scored another point in the 5th end, and stole a hard earned point in the 6th end, requiring a measurement, to come within 2 points going into the final end.

“If I’m going to score more than one point in an end tonight, I want it to be THIS END.” said Bill Marshall after the measurement brought him within 2 points of tying the game.

After Team Peper’s Vice Skip, Beau Welling, jammed up the middle of the house, Bill Marshall’s first stone was off its mark and drifted left and through the house.   Lon Peper’s first stone, an attempted guard, drifted to the left into the 12-foot circle.  Marshall’s final stone was on its mark, but it still drifted left, taking out his own stones in the process, leaving Team Peper sitting four with one stone left, which went undelivered.

“My whole strategy that final end was to make sure that Bill’s team could not score more than 1 point.  I had no idea we would score 4 ourselves.” said Lon Peper as he wrote this article.  ”Our usual second, Kris, has been out about half the season on medical leave, so we were happy to have Apryl Rash take her place.  Unfortunately Apryl could not make it tonight, so I had to do some scrambling this morning to get a fill-in.  Thanks goes to Dave DeLauder for filling in at the last minute for us.” Peper added.

This is the second South Carolina state championship in a row for Beau Welling.  Welling jokingly said he was going to text US Olympian, Pete Fenson, to tell him to watch out, he’s now a two-time defending state champion and setting his sites on Fenson.  This is also the second year an a row that a team skipped by Bill Marshall has finished second in the state championship.

Team Marshall (Bill Marshall, Kay Oken, Ryan Smith and Linda Marshall) 2012 South Carolina State Curling Runners-up

The South Carolina State Curling Championship is held at the end of the Palmetto Curling Club’s Spring league, pitting the winner of the Upstate Division against the winner of the Palmetto Division.  Both teams ended the regular season 7-2-1.