The four teams that started play on Friday at the inaugural PEI Mixed Doubles Curling Trials at the Crapaud Community Curling Club have now been reduced to two — and they’re both Junior-age rinks — the Kyle Holland and Katie Fullerton duo from the Charlottetown Curling Complex and the Cornwall Curling Club, and the Tyler Smith and Chloé McCloskey twosome from the Crapaud and Cornwall clubs.
Holland and Fullerton captured the A section of the Modified Triple-Knockout round on Friday, with an 11-3 win over the Dario Zannier/Vivian Holm pair from the host club in the A qualifier game, On Saturday morning, Smith and McCloskey beat Crapaud’s Daniel and Nancy MacFadyen team 9-4 to advance to the Saturday afternoon B qualifier match against Holland/Fullerton, who got off to a great start in their game, stealing singles in the first 3 ends. Smith and McCloskey then jumped into the lead with a four point fourth end.. The teams then traded deuces and singles to give Smith and McCloskey the B qualifier ,by a 7-6 score.
Down in the must-win C flight, the MacFadyens took on clubmates Zannier and Holm in an afternoon game, with a six-point 3rd end propelling the MacFadyen rink to an 11-5 victory. Holland /Fullerton then eliminated the MacFadyens with a 6-2 win in the 4 pm draw.
The two junior rinks, Holland/Fullerton and Smith/McCloskey will play up to three games on Sunday, first squaring off in the C Qualifier at 10 am. The winner of that game will have a big advantage going into the two game championship round at one and four, as they will take the championship if they win either game, while the loser of the C Qualifier would have to win both championship round games to go on to represent PEI at the National Mixed Doubles Trials in Ottawa in March 2015.
All four junior players have Mixed Doubles experience at a national level, having competed in Mixed Doubles games as part of the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors, with McCloskey winning a silver medal in Mixed Doubles at last year’s Juniors.
Live results: http://curlatlantic.com/scoreboard/competitions/1338-mixed-doubles-curling-trials-pei/scoreboard/?date_filter=2014-12-14