Round robin play wrapped up today at the Curl PEI/Pepsi Provincial Junior Curling Championships, with the Christopher Gallant rink from Charlottetown and the Amanda MacLean team from Cornwall going through the round robin undefeated, with 6-0 and 4-0 win-loss records, respectively, and advancing directly to the 7 pm Sunday finals. The MacLean team includes third Kassinda Bulger, second stone Emily Gray, lead Aleya Quilty, and alternate Jane DiCarlo. Third Kyle Holland, second Taylor McInnis and lead Andrew Cameron round out the Gallant rink.
Photo: Amanda MacLean rink in action
The Veronica Smith rink, also from the host club, finished in second place in the women’s round robin, with a 3-1 record, while Kaleigh MacKay and her combined Crapaud/Silver Fox rink were third, with a 2-2 record. Smith and MacKay now advance to the semi-finals, Sunday afternoon at 2:30, with the winner facing MacLean in the final.
Photo: Christopher Gallant
The men’s side is much more complicated, with five of the six other teams finishing behind Gallant with 3-3 win-loss records. Therefore, it was necessary to look at the results from the skills-based team ranking process (all four members of each team draw to the button. The total accumulated distance determines the ranking). The results from the ranking have Cody Dixon and his Montague rink ranked second, Matthew MacLean and his Maple Leaf Curling Club team placed 3rd, Tyler Smith and his host club rink in 4th spot, Shawn Pitre and his Charlottetown foursome ranked 5th, and Alex MacFadyen and his Silver Fox team ranked 6th.
There are three tie-breaker games. This evening, 5th-ranked Pitre played 6th-ranked MacFadyen, with Pitre winning by a 7-5 score.
Sunday at 10 am, the third and fourth ranked teams, skipped by MacLean and Smith, will face off on one sheet, while the second-ranked Cody Dixon will take on Shawn Pitre. The winners of these two quarter-final games will play in the semi-final, Sunday at 2:30 pm, with the winner facing Gallant in the 7 pm final.
In today’s women’s round robin games, the Amanda MacLean team, who competed at the Canada Games in 2011, beat the Emily Keen rink from Charlottetown 8-2, while the Veronica Smith foursome beat the Kaleigh MacKay rink 7-2. On the men’s side, Gallant, whose team includes three of the four members of last year’s championship rink, with Taylor McInnis new to the rink this year, doubled Tyler Smith 4-2, and scored a deuce in the extra end to beat Alex MacFadyen 8-6. In other games, Matthew MacLean downed the winless Justin Campbell rink from Summerside 13-4, Dixon beat Pitre 10-6, Tyler Smith edged Campbell 11-10 in an extra end in a game that saw a five-ender by the Campbell squad, and MacLean scored a triple in the final end of an 8-6 win over Pitre.
End by end results are available at https://peicurling.com/juniors.
The junior men’s and women’s champions will advance to the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors, February 2-10, in Fort McMurray Alberta.