By Charles Reid.

Members of Prince Edward Island’s Brett Gallant rink have come from east and west for the Canadian mixed curling championship beginning today in Sudbury, Ont.

Third stone Erin Carmody travelled east from Calgary while skip Gallant, second Anson Carmody and lead Michelle Mackie headed west from P.E.I. for the Sudbury Curling Club.

The foursome starts play today at 11 am AT against Manitoba, plays again at 3:30 p.m.  against Ontario then faces Alberta at 8 p.m. AT.

“We really only played together in the provincials (last March). That’s only three games,” Gallant said this week. “We’ve probably got the fewest games under our belt than any other team.”

Still, all of Gallant’s crew has national experience so what’s to come in the week-long event won’t be a huge surprise.

Erin Carmody, who now plays with the Crystal Webster rink in Calgary, is a three-time P.E.I. junior women’s champion and 2010 P.E.I. women’s winner and national silver medallist.

Her brother, Anson, won two P.E.I. junior titles with Gallant.

Mackie is a former junior teammate of Erin and played third on the Meaghan Hughes rink which won the 2003 P.E.I. junior title.

Gallant is a six-time P.E.I. junior winner, a former Canadian junior champion and a world junior silver medallist.

P.E.I.’s Robert Campbell won the Canadian mixed championshp last year, beating the host host Terry McNamee rink from Manitoba in the final.

But the Gallant rink ousted Campbell at the P.E.I. mixed final in March and earned a berth in this year’s nationals.

“Definitely we head into it with a positive chance,” said Gallant. “We’ve never curled against these teams so it’s hard to rank the field. It really could be pretty much anybody.”

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Members of the P.E.I. mixed curling team, from left, are skip Brett Gallant, third Erin Carmody, second Anson Carmody and lead Michelle Mackie. Submitted photo