The ADL/Sport PEI Awards for curling were presented tonight at the Silver Fox Curling & Yacht Club in Summerside following Curl PEI’s Annual General Meeting. The winners of the senior (adult) men’s and women’s Athlete of the Year awards were Rod MacDonald, who competed in the Senior Men’s, Men’s, and Mixed events, and Provincial, Maritime, and Canadian Women’s Stick Curling champion Ruth Stavert.

Photo (L-R) Claude LeBlanc, ADL Corporate Sales Manager, Ruth Stavert, Rod MacDonald, George Koke, Curl PEI President

Rod MacDonald

Rod MacDonald skipped two provincial championship teams and one runner-up this season, going undefeated to win the Credit Unions of PEI Senior Men’s title, winning the provincial Mixed championship, and coming second in the Tankard provincial men’s. And, for the first time, he got to compete in a national championship in his home town, finishing fourth after losing out in a tiebreaker at the Canadian Mixed at the Silver Fox Curling and Yacht Club in Summerside. MacDonald and his Mixed team, which includes his wife, Karen, his sister Kathy O’Rourke, and her husband Mark, are looking forward to competing in the Canadian Mixed,  November 14-23 at the Rideau Curling Club in Ottawa.

To-date, MacDonald has won three provincial Mixed titles, two Senior Men’s, and seven Tankards, winning his first three playing on a team skipped by his brother Peter in 1978,  1981, and 1996, and then skipping his own team to wins in 2005, 2006, 2009, and 2010.

Ruth Stavert

Ruth Stavert is a Cornwall Curling Club stick curler, who, with her teammate Eileen Blanchard, won the 10 team women’s division at the Canadian 2-Person Stick Curling Championships at their home club in April. With teammate Gloria Clarke, she won the Provincial Women’s Stick Championship for the fourth time, the only winners in its four year history, and went on to the Maritime championships in Montague, winning it, too. With Blanchard, she won gold at the Vogue Optical Provincial 55+ Games women’s division, giving Stavert a complete sweep of Provincial, Maritime, and National women’s stick curling championship events.

In the summer months, Stavert participates in a number of sports that bear some similarity to stick curling, taking home bronze medals in the provincial 55+ Summer Games bocce and lawn bowling events last summer, and, with Clarke, winning a gold in the “washer toss” event.