Both of the defending champion Smith rinks will get a chance to be repeat Pepsi Provincial Juniors champions, after Tyler Smith and his Montague team won the men’s semi-final this afternoon at Summerside’s Silver Fox Curling and Yacht Club, beating Cornwall’s Matthew MacLean rink 8-4. The defending men’s champs will take on the Kyle Holland foursome from Charlottetown, who won the Page A vs B game on Sunday night by an 8-0 score over MacLean to advance to tonight’s 7 pm championship game. Both Holland, and lead Taylor McInnis were on last year’s runner-up team, skipped by Chris Gallant, who is now curling and attending school in Winnipeg.
The women’s final will feature the same teams as last year.
Veronica Smith of Cornwall (no relation to Tyler) punched her ticket to the championship game on Sunday morning after going through round robin play undefeated and sewing up first place and the bye to the final. The team she beat in that game, skipped by Amanda MacLean (Matthew’s sister), had only that loss, finishing second in the round robin, and advancing to today’s semi-final, where they edged their Cornwall clubmates, the Emily Keen team, 7-6 in an extra end to go to the 7 pm final.
In today’s men’s semi, MacLean was leading 2-1 after four ends of play, but a Smith deuce in the fifth gave him the lead. MacLean was kept to a single in the sixth, but Smith pulled off a four-ender in seven, and stole a single in eight for a big 8-3 lead. MacLean picked up a single in the ninth, but ran out of rocks in the 10th.
Keen led the women’s semi by a 2-1 score after four ends, but MacLean pulled ahead with a triple in five. Keen took a single in the sixth, but MacLean took singles in the next two ends for a 6-3 lead after eight ends. Keen took one in the ninth, and then stole a deuce in the tenth to bring the game to an extra end, where MacLean, with last rock advantage scored the winning point.
The winners of tonight’s finals will advance to the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors, January 18-26, 2014 in Liverpool NS.
Live end-by-end results from the Pepsi Juniors are available at PEICurling.com/juniors
