Round robin play wrapped up on Wednesday at the Provincial Stick Championship, sponsored by the Ferguson-Logan Montague Funeral Home, and held at the Maple Leaf Curling Club in O’Leary.
The 12 team, two pool Open Division (any combination of male/female players) quarter-finals go at 10:45 am on Thursday, with Bazil and Sterling Higginbotham from Montague playing Blair Bernard and Dale Dennis from the host club, and Bob Leard and Larry Dewar from Montague taking on Orville Willis and Sherrill Barwise from the Maple Leaf.
The semi-finals at 12 noon see Cornwall’s Sterling Stratton and Barry Craswell face the winner of the quarter-final game between the Higginbothams and Bernard/Dennis, while Floyd Stewart and Gordon MacDonald from Montague take on the winner of the Leard/Dewar vs Willis/Barwise match.
The winners of the semis square off in the 2:30 pm final.
In the six team, one pool Women’s Division, Audrey Thompson and Ann Barwise from the Maple Leaf take on Cornwall’s Gloria Clarke/Ruth Stavert duo in the 12 noon semi, with the winner facing Cornwall’s Myrna Craswell/Etta Reid twosome in the 2:30 pm final.
The four open division teams in the semis and the final, along with the top two women’s rinks from this year’s event earn the right to compete in the Maritime Stick Curling Championships, March 11-13 in Amherst, NS.
The top two Open and Women’s division teams (the Women’s division, introduced when PEI hosted the event, is back this year) also earn the right to compete in the 2015 Canadian Open Stick Curling Championship, April 2-5 at the Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is an “open” event, but reserves entries for the top two teams from each of BC, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI.
In stick curling there are two curlers per team, who deliver their rocks with delivery sticks, with each team member delivering from opposite ends. Sweeping is allowed only from the hog line to the back of the house at the playing end. Two curlers, one from each team, alternately deliver 6 stones each per end, while their teammate skips that end. The roles are then reversed, and the partners deliver the stones back. No stone may be removed from play until the fourth stone of each end. Games are six ends and take about an hour to play. For more information on stick curling, including complete rules of play, visit www.stickcurling.ca.
Live results at http://curlatlantic.com/scoreboard/#/competitions/1505-2015-ferguson-logan-funeral-home-stick-curling-championship-pei/scoreboard