The Charlottetown Curling Complex and Cornwall Curling Club duo of Kyle Holland and Katie Fullerton scored five points in the fourth end on the way to a 7-3 win in six ends over the Tyler Smith and Chloé McCloskey team from the host Crapaud Community Curling Club and the Cornwall club this afternoon to win PEI’s first-ever Mixed Doubles trials. Both teams are junior (under 21) age, with Holland skipping the PEI Pepsi Junior men’s champs last year, and Smith winning the previous year. Smith also represented PEI in the Canada Games in 2011, and will be going again this winter. Both Fullerton and McCloskey are members of the two-time reigning provincial junior women’s championship rink, skipped by Veronica Smith.
Photo (L-R): Mixed Doubles winners Kyle Holland and Katie Fullerton
Photo (L-R): Mixed Doubles runners-up Chloé McCloskey and Tyler Smith
All four have some experience at the national level, playing in Mixed Doubles mini-tournaments at the Canadian Juniors. The Holland and Fullerton duo will now be the first Island rink to advance to the Canadian Junior Mixed Trials, which take place in Ottawa in March, with the winner of that event advancing to the World Mixed Doubles in Sochi Russia in April. PEI has already had representation at the World’s, with Robert Campbell and Rebecca Jean MacDonald earning a berth in 2011 as part of their Canadian Mixed championship win.
In this afternoon’s championship game, the Holland/Fullerton team scored a single in the first end, with Smith and McCloskey taking singles in the next two for a 3-1 lead. Holland’s five point fourth end, followed by singles by each team in the next two ends brought the game to an early conclusion.
Holland and Fullerton beat the Smith/McCloskey twosome by an 8-1 score in five ends this morning to capture the C qualifier of the four team Modified Triple Knockout draw. As Holland/Fullerton also captured the A section, while Smith/McCloskey won only the B, they had the advantage going into the two game Championship Round at 1 and 4 pm and would win the championship if they won either game, while Smith and McCloskey would have had to win both. As it turned out, only the first Championship round game was needed.
Holland and Fullerton captured the A section on Friday, with an 11-3 win over the Dario Zannier/Vivian Holm pair from the host Crapaud club in the 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.
The Mixed Doubles game format, relatively new to curling, is played over eight ends. Each team has only six stones and one of those stones from each team is prepositioned on the centre line before every end of play. One player delivers the first and last stones of the end while the other player throws the second, third and fourth stones. If they choose to, the two players may swap positions from one end to the next. Both team members are also allowed to sweep.