Peter MacDonald and defending champion Shirley Berry will each have a big advantage going into Monday’s two game championship rounds of their respective Credit Unions of PEI Provincial Seniors Curling Championships at the Charlottetown Curling Club, as each have won two of the three sections of their triple-knockout draws, and will win the Seniors title if they take either of the two games, while their adversaries, defending champion Mel Bernard of the Silver Fox, and Karen MacDonald of the Charlottetown Curling Club, will have to win both games.
Peter MacDonald, playing out of the Charlottetown Curling Club with Peter Gallant, Rod MacDonald, and Doug MacGregor, won both the A and B sections, but lost a C qualifier, 9-3 to Summerside’s Grant Somers, on Sunday afternoon. Somers then lost a close 5-4 decision to Bernard, and his rink of Blair Jay, Douglas Simmons, and Earle Proude, in the C final.
MacDonald will now play Bernard Monday at 9 am. If MacDonald wins, he will take the championship. If Bernard wins, they will face off again in a sudden death final at 2 pm.
In the women’s section, Shirley Berry and her combined Cornwall/Charlottetown rink of Sandy Hope, Shelley Ebbett, and Arleen Harris, with coach Butch McGee, had won the A section, while Karen MacDonald, and her team of Paula Creamer, Kay Atkinson, and Karen Hardy, had captured the B. On Sunday morning, MacDonald edged Cornwall’s Karen Currie 10-9 in an extra end, while Berry got by Cornwall’s Debbie Rhodenhizer 6-5 to advance to Sunday evening’s C final, where Berry stole a deuce in the 1oth end to win 7-5.
The two teams square off Monday at 9 am in the first of two championship games. Berry will take the title if she wins either game, while MacDonald must win both the 9 am and 2 pm games to take the title.
The winning men’s and women’s teams will advance to the Canadian Seniors, March 19-28 at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club.
Eleven men’s and seven women’s teams took part in the PEI Seniors championships, for curlers age 50 and over.