Two of the three rinks with PEI players won their openers on Wednesday at the Canadian Mixed Doubles Curling Trials in Ottawa. Adam Casey is playing with Marie Christianson of Nova Scotia, and won his opener 8-7, while Kyle Holland and Katie Fullerton from Charlottetown and Cornwall won their first game 10-9. The duo of Patty Wallingham from the Yukon, and PEI’s Robbie Doherty dropped their opening match 11-0.

(Curling Canada)

The winning team will represent Canada at the 2015 World Mixed Doubles Championship, April 18-25 in Sochi, Russia, at the same Ice Cube Curling Center that played host to the 2014 Winter OIympic and Paralympic curling competitions.

The Canadian Trials competition format consisst of 32 teams (each team consists of one male curler and one female curler) divided into four pools of eight, with the top two from each pool after the round robin plus the four teams with the next-best records advancing to a 12-team single elimination playoff.

The gold-medal game is scheduled for Sunday at 6:30 p.m. Atlantic

For the full list of competitors, click here. And for the full schedule, click here.

Thirteen Member Association champions are in the field, with 19 more teams coming from a call for entries with priority given to individual players based on their standing on the Order of Merit, which is based on Curling Canada’s Canadian Team Ranking System.

The World Curling Federation, with support from Curling Canada, is making its final preparations to pitch to the International Olympic Committee Program Commission later this year to have mixed doubles curling included in the Winter Olympics as soon as the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.