The Kyle Holland and Katie Fullerton duo from the Charlottetown Curling Complex and the Cornwall Curling Club beat the Tyler Smith and Chloé McCloskey twosome from the Crapaud and Cornwall clubs by an 8-1 score in five ends this morning to capture the C qualifier at the inaugural PEI Mixed Doubles Curling Trials at the Crapaud Community Curling Club. Both are junior-age teams. As Holland/Fullerton also captured the A section of the four team Modified Triple Knockout, while Smith/McCloskey won only the B section, they will have the advantage going into the two game Championship Round at 1 and 4 pm. Holland/Fullerton will take the championship if they win either game, while Smith and McCloskey 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.
In this morning’s contest, Holland/Fullerton took three points with hammer in the first end, and kept Smith/McCloskey to a single point in end two. Holland/Fullerton then took a deuce and stole a single, giving them a 6-1 lead after four ends. A stolen deuce in the fifth game them and 8-1 lead and brought the game to an early conclusion.
Holland and Fullerton captured the A section 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 a Saturday 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.
All four junior players in the Championship Round 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