No undefeated teams remain, going into the Friday evening draw at the Pepsi Provincial Junior Curling Championships being played at the Charlottetown Curling Club. Three junior men’s rinks, captained by Alex Matters, Matthew MacLean and Sam Ramsay, and two junior women’s teams, directed by Amanda MacLean and Sarah Fullerton, all have 3-1 win-loss records.
Two-time defending champion Fullerton, who curls out of Charlottetown and Cornwall, beat the Amanda MacLean rink from Cornwall and the Maple Leaf club in O’Leary, by an 11-3 score this morning. MacLean will square off against Fullerton again tonight at 7 in the women’s double round-robin draw. Veronica Smith of Cornwall (2-2) plays Emily Keen of Charlottetown (0-4) in the other junior womens contest.
In action this afternoon, Fullerton downed Keen 8-1, and MacLean edged Smith 7-6.
The final double-round women’s draw goes Saturday at 10 am with Keen taking on MacLean, and Fullerton playing Smith, the only team that she has lost to in the event.
On the junior men’s side, it came down to the last rock in the battle of the two undefeated teams, skipped by Alex Matters of Charlottetown, and Matthew MacLean of the Maple Leaf club this morning. MacLean scored one in the 9th to tie the game, but gave up hammer for the final frame. Chris Gallant, who throws final stones for Matters, hit and stuck for the 5-4 win.
Photo: Sam Ramsay rink (top to bottom): Sam Ramsay, Matthew Nabuurs, Shawn Pitre, Connor MacPhee
Sam Ramsay, whose host club team includes two members of last years’ championship rink, tripled Alex MacFadyen of the Silver Fox 12-4, taking a four point fifth end, and winding the game up early with five points in the 9th. Jeff Taylor of Cornwall had a 6-2 win over Montague’s Cody Dixon in the other morning game.
Ramsay pulled into the three way tie for first in the afternoon draw, with an 8-3 win over Matters, blanking the first three ends, and scoring a deuce in four. Matters responded with a dpair of his own in end five to tie the game 2-all at the half. Another blank was followed by a rare six point end for Ramsay in the seventh. Matters scored a single in the eighth, but couldn’t recover, and it was handshake time.
The other afternoon junior men’s games saw Matthew MacLean double Dixon 8-4, and Taylor beat MacFadyen 9-4. Taylor currently sits at 2-2, with Dixon 1-3 and MacFadyen 0-4. The junior men’s round robin wraps up with tonight’s 7 pm draw, where MacLean faces Taylor, Matters plays MacFadyen, and Ramsay takes on Dixon.
The top two teams from the junior men’s round robin, following any tiebreakers, will advance to a best of three final round. The top two junior women’s teams from the double round robin will play in a sudden death final. In the event that one team goes through the double round robin undefeated, they will be declared the winner, without playing the one-game final.
The junior women’s championship game, if required, goes Monday January 2 at 10 am, while the first junior men’s final goes Saturday at 10 am or 2:30 pm, or Sunday at 1 pm, depending on tiebreakers. The second junior men’s best of three game goes Monday at 10 am, with the third, if needed, taking place at 2:30 pm Monday.
Complete draw and live end-by-end results are available at peicurling.com/juniors and at livecurling.com.
The junior men’s and women’s champions will advance to the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors, February 4-12, 2012, in Napanee Ontario.