The first taste of national competition for Donald Clarey’s rink out of Montague was a sour one as the P.E.I. squad fell 8-2 to Quebec’s Richard Faguy in six ends Wednesday in Charlottetown to open The Dominion national curling club championships.

After P.E.I. only managed a single point in the sixth end, Clarey announced to the Quebec team his team’s intentions to forego the rest of the draw.

“It was a tough one, but (Quebec) played really well and they deserved it,” said P.E.I. lead Cameron Lerch. “We missed some shots and they made pretty much everything.”

Other members of the P.E.I. squad are third Larry Richards and second Michael Clarey.

The Kim Aylward rink from Summerside beat Quebec’s Maureen Horan 9-4 in the Wednesday night draw in Cornwall.

Other members of the Aylward rink are third Jeanne Duffenais, second Michelle Weaver and lead Debbie Caissy.

Aylward plays today against Nuvanut at 10 a.m. in Cornwall and against Saskatchewan at 4:45 p.m. in Charlottetown.

Clarey will play the same two provinces today, with games at 1:30 p.m. (Nuvanut) in Cornwall and 8 p.m. (Saskatchewan) in Charlottetown.

Although it was a tough way to start a national championship, Lerch said his men’s team is looking at the positives from the opening-day experience.

“Sometimes it’s good to get blown out like that, it makes you humble. We’re still confident moving forward.

“You just shrug it off. We’ve had this before and come back and played teams that beat the team that hammered us and we hammered them. It really depends on the day, basically, so we’re looking forward to the next game and will shrug this one off.”

Lerch felt the game was starting to turn after the second end when Quebec stole a pair of points to go up 4-0.

“Once you get there it’s pretty hard to come back especially against a team that can hit really well. At that point we were just trying to get anything into play and trying to get a couple of points but we never managed to get back into it.”

Faguy said although his Quebec team was up 4-0 after the second end, he didn’t feel it had complete control of the game until after the sixth when the teams shook hands.

“You never feel you’re in control until the end of each end. I figured after six if we were up by a bundle, we were playing well enough to keep control of the game,” he said. “You’re never too sure because you can get four or five scored against you pretty quick.”

Faguy said nerves may have played a major role in the outcome of P.E.I.’s first game.

“You don’t know what it is until you’ve played your first national game. It was probably (Clarey’s) first national game,” he said. “We did the same thing (against Saskatchewan in an 11-3 opening loss), we just got hammered. We had learned (from that game) and got the jitters out of our system, so it was a bit easier to focus, we weren’t as impressed by everything (in the game against P.E.I.).”

The championships continue through to Sunday, with games at the Charlottetown and Cornwall curling clubs.

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(Live scoring available at www.thedominioncurls.ca/en/Default.aspx)

Past game scores are now available, too.

Live streaming of games on sheets B and C at the Charlottetown Curling Club is available on the Curlcast screen.