The Rod MacDonald rink from the Silver Fox Curling and Yacht Club in Summerside, and the Charlottetown Curling Complex stole a point in the final end to edge Charlottetown’s Peter Gallant team by a 6-5 score this afternoon, to win the A section qualifier of the PEI Credit Unions Senior Men’s Curling Championship at the Montague Curling Club.
File photo: Rod MacDonald
Other members of the team are Kevin Champion, Blair Weeks, and Mark Victor. This puts the MacDonald foursome into the Wednesday championship round at the six team event, for curlers age 50 and over. The Shirley Berry rink from Cornwall and Charlottetown have won the Senior Women’s title by default, as they were the only entry. Berry and the winning men’s team will advance to the 2015 Canadian Senior Curling Championships, March 21-28, 2015, in Edmonton, AB.
MacDonald also drops down to play in the “B” qualifier game of the modified triple knockout round, at 2 pm on Monday. He’ll take on the winner of a 10 am Monday game between Gallant and Summerside’s Mel Bernard rink. Bernard beat Montague’s Donald Clarey, and Charlottetown’s Bill Hope, both by 7-3 scores, today to advance to the B semi against Gallant. The other three members of the Bernard rink were on last year’s championship team, skipped by Ted MacFadyen, who is not competing this year. MacDonald was last year’s runner-up.
Blair Jay of the Silver Fox eliminated the host club’s Clarey rink this afternoon with a 6-1 victory down in the “must win” C event. Jay plays Hope at 10 am Monday, with the winner surviving to take on the loser of the B semi between Gallant and Bernard on Monday at 2. The C qualifier goes Tuesday at 2 pm.
The three section qualifiers play in the two game championship round, Wednesday at 10 and 2. If the MacDonald team wins all three sections, they will be declared the winner without playing the Wednesday games. If a team wins any two sections, they will have a “double life” in the Wednesday games against the winner of the third section, winning the title if they take either game, while their opponent would have to win both. If there are three separate section winners, the one that played in the most section qualifier games gets the bye to the final game, while the other two would square off in a semi-final with the winner advancing to the championship game. If there is a tie in number of qualifier games played, the team who qualifies earliest gets the bye to the final.
End by end Curlcast results at CurlAtlantic.com/scoreboard
Event website is PEICurling.com/seniors20142015