We just received word from Robyn Mattie of Curling Canada that the Kim Dolan rink has also advanced to the Championship round at the Canadian Seniors in Digby, as they were tied with BC in win-loss records, but they were awarded the berth based on Last Stone Delivery results.

Dolan rink

The most talent-laden field in the history of the event will open play Thursday at the Nutana Curling Club in Saskatoon in the 2016 Canadian Mixed Doubles Curling Championship.

PEICurling.com photo (L-R): Kyle Holland, Sabrina Smith

[PEI will be represented by the team of Sabrina Smith (Cornwall) and Kyle Holland (Charlottetown), who won the PEI playdowns in December. Island native Brett Gallant is also competing, teamed up with Alberta’s Jocelyn Peterman]

With mixed doubles now having Olympic medal status, many of the sport’s top Canadian stars have added it to their repertoire.

And that’s reflected in the deep field that will take to the ice in Saskatoon.

Notable entries include the pairings of Rachel Homan and Mark Nichols, Lisa Weagle and John Epping, Mike and Dawn McEwen, Emma Miskew and Ryan Fry, Joanne Courtney and Reid Carruthers, Chelsea Carey and Colin Hodgson, Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant, Stefanie Lawton and Steve Laycock, and defending champs Charley Thomas and Kalynn Park.

For the first time in the history of the Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship, the event will be streamed live. Go to the event website, www.curling.ca/2016mixeddoubles/, to access the streaming link.

The winning team will represent Canada at the 2016 World Mixed Doubles Championship, April 16-23 in Karlstad, Sweden.

That will be the first qualifying event to determine the seven countries that will join the host South Korean team in the field of the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, where mixed doubles curling will make its debut as an Olympic medal sport after being approved by the International Olympic Committee this past June.

The Canadian Mixed Doubles gets underway on Thursday morning, with the first draw set for 8:30 a.m. (all times MDT).

The Canadian Mixed Doubles competition format will feature 32 teams (each team consists of one male curler and one female curler) divided into four pools of eight, with the four pool winners after the round robin plus the eight teams with the next-best records advancing to a 12-team single elimination playoff. The four pool-winners have first-round byes.

The gold-medal game is scheduled for Sunday at 4 p.m.

For the full list of competitors, click here. And for the full schedule, click here.

The Nutana Club in Saskatoon will play host to the country’s best mixed doubles curling teams. (Photo, Courtesy Nutana Curling Club)

Champions from 13 Member Associations are in the field, as are last year’s champions, Thomas and Park from Calgary, and the next-highest-finishing still-intact team from last year, Hugh and Janet Murphy (tied for third last year in Ottawa). The rest of the teams qualified through mixed doubles competition during the 2015-16 season.

The Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship began in 2013 at Leduc, Alta., where the Quebec pairing of Robert Desjardins and Isabelle Néron captured gold, and went on to finish 10th at the 2013 World Mixed Doubles Championship in Fredericton, N.B..

In 2014 at Ottawa, Kim and Wayne Tuck won the Canadian title, going on to place ninth at the world championship in Dumfries, Scotland, while Thomas and Park were fourth at the 2015 world championship in Sochi, Russia.

Canadian teams for previous world mixed doubles championships were drawn from the winning team at the traditional four-player Canadian mixed curling championship.

The World Mixed Doubles Championship began in 2008 in Vierumäki, Finland. It has since been captured five times by Switzerland, although the Hungarian pair of Zsolt Kiss and Dorottya Palancsa has won two of the past three world championships.

Canada’s best result at the world mixed doubles is a bronze medal in 2009, won by Sean Grassie and Allison Nimik

The mixed doubles game format is played over eight ends (instead of the usual 10 at Curling Canada four-player events). Each team has only six stones and one of those stones from each team is pre-positioned 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.

This season, a new Power Play option was added; once per game, teams with last rock can position the rocks to the side — one rock on the tee-line, intersecting the 12- and eight-foot circles, and a corner guard protecting it.

Click to read this story at Curling Canada

The Holland Hurricanes women’s curling team finished round robin play at the at CCAA nationals in London ON, hosted by Fanshawe College, with a 2-5 win-loss record, picking up wins over Confederation and Niagara colleges, but they did not advance to the playoff round. The Island squad didn’t go home empty-handed, winning the women’s Fair Play award.

Photo (L-R): Kellie-Lynn Younker (Lead, Cornwall, PEI), Bethany Dauphinee (Second, Liverpool, NS), Breanna Huntley (Third, New Minas, NS), Jaylene Holmes-Tang (Skip, Gravenhurst, ON). The team is coached by Angela Hodgson, who is in her fifth year with the program.

The Seneca Sting Women’s Team and the Humber Hawks Men’s Team were named the 2016 CCAA Curling National Champions.  The All-Ontario finals had the Seneca Sting defeating the Fanshawe Falcons 8-4 in the Women’s final and the Humber Hawks defeating the Sault Cougars in the Men’s final by a final score of 8-4. This was the first National Championship for the Seneca Sting in Women’s Curling.

The 2016 Everest Canadian Senior Men’s and Women’s Curling Championships begin Monday at the Digby Area Recreation Centre in Digby, N.S.

It’s the second time that the city has hosted the championships, following the 2011 edition at the same venue. Fourteen men’s teams and 14 women’s teams (representing the 10 provinces plus Northern Ontario, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon) will compete in the Everest Canadian Seniors, March 28-April 2, with the winners then representing Canada at the 2017 World Seniors.

The teams have been seeded into two seven-team pools per gender, based on last year’s results, and will first play a round robin within their pool through Wednesday.

The top four in each pool then advance to the Championship Pool for games against teams from the other pool, while the bottom three in each go to the Seeding Pool. At the conclusion of the Championship Pool on Friday, the semifinals will be held Saturday morning, April 2 at 9:30 a.m. AT, pairing 1 vs 4 and 2 vs 3. The winners then advance to their respective gold-medal finals at 3 p.m. while the losers meet in bronze-medal games at the same time.

Colleen Jones will be the home-province hopeful when the 2016 Everest Canadian Seniors kick off Monday in Digby. (Photo, Curling Canada/Andrew Klaver)

This year’s renewal brings together one of the finest fields ever assembled for a Canadian Seniors. The women’s side boasts several champions, topped by six-time Canadian (1982, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004) and two-time (2001, 2004) world champion Colleen Jones of Halifax, who will try to become just the second curler to skip her team to victory at the Scotties, Worlds and Canadian Seniors. Only British Columbia’s Pat Sanders has done so.

Last year in Edmonton, the Jones team lost the final to Alberta’s Terri Loblaw. It was the third attempt by Jones to win the Seniors, after competing in 2011 and 2012 as well. She’s joined by long-time teammates Kim Kelly at third and Nancy Delahunt at lead, with Mary Sue Radford at second.

Also competing is Alberta’s Cathy King, a Scotties (1998), Canadian Seniors (2012), World Seniors (2013) and two-time (1977, 1978) Canadian Juniors champion, the only curler to accomplish this feat.

Other skips with numerous Scotties appearances include New Brunswick’s Heidi Hanlon, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Cathy Cunningham, Saskatchewan’s Sherry Anderson, Prince Edward Island’s Kim Dolan and Debbie Moss of the Northwest Territories.

In addition, Hanlon won the 2011 Canadian Seniors at Digby and the 2012 World Seniors at Copenhagen while British Columbia’s Diane Foster also accomplished the same feat, winning the 2007 Canadian Seniors at Trois-Rivières, Que., when representing Alberta, and the 2008 World Seniors at Vierumäki, Finland.

Ontario skip Jo-Ann Rizzo was the silver-medallist at the 2013 Tim Hortons Roar of the Rings Canadian Curling Trials at Winnipeg, playing third for Sherry Middaugh.

In men’s, Alberta’s Ed Lukowich, a two-time Brier (1978, 1986) and one-time (1986) world champion, has qualified. Other skips with Brier experience include British Columbia’s Bob Ursel, Prince Edward Island’s Rod MacDonald, Saskatchewan’s 1995 Brier runner-up Brad Heidt, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Jeff Thomas, New Brunswick’s Grant Odishaw, Nova Scotia’s Alan O’Leary, Northern Ontario’s Rob Gordon and Ontario’s Bryan Cochrane.

O’Leary also won the 2014 Canadian Seniors at Yellowknife and was the silver-medallist in the 2015 World Seniors at Sochi, Russia.

Randy Neufeld of Manitoba is also back to defend his title, which he won last year at Edmonton when defeating Quebec’s Ted Butler in the final.

The Canadian Senior Men’s Championship began in 1965 in Port Arthur, Ont. Since then, Manitoba has won a leading 12 titles, Ontario is next with 10 while Alberta has eight. Nova Scotia has won once, that by O’Leary in 2014.

The Canadian Senior Women’s Championship began in 1973 in Ottawa. Ontario has won a leading 10 crowns, followed by British Columbia with eight and Alberta with seven. Nova Scotia is a four-time winner, including two by Colleen Pinkney — in 2009 and 2013. The championships were conducted separately until being combined in 1985 at Yorkton, Sask.

The World Seniors officially began in 2002. Canada has won a leading nine men’s and 10 women’s titles. Since 2005, the winners of the Canadian Seniors have represented Canada at the following year’s World Seniors. Thus, last year’s winners — Manitoba’s Neufeld and Alberta’s Terri Loblaw — will wear the Maple Leaf in the 2016 World Seniors, April 16-23 at Karlstad, Sweden.

This year’s winners will compete at the 2017 World Seniors at Lethbridge, Alta., April 22-29.

Live draw results for the 2016 Canadian Seniors will be available atwww.curling.ca. For event information, visithttp://www.curling.ca/2016seniors.

This is the second year of title sponsorship by Everest, the first nationwide funeral planning and concierge service.

The Dave MacDougal/Paul Doucet team from Yarmouth NS won the open division of the Maritime Stick Curling Championship held recently at the Cornwall Curling club by narrowly defeating the Ron Crowe/Bill Spinney team from Truro. The women’s division championship game was an all Cornwall PEI event with the Etta Reid/Myrna Craswell team defeating the 5 time champion team of Ruth Stavert and Gloria Clarke.

Photo: MacDougal/Doucet rink

Photo (l-r) Etta Reid, Myrna Craswell

The  Maritime Stick Curling Championship, now in its 8th season, consists of 6 teams from each province (4 open teams and 2 women’s) making it an 18 team event. Stick curling is a relatively new game designed to accommodate persons with limited mobility, but it is open to anyone who wants to compete. Rocks must be delivered with a stick and sweeping is only allowed from the near hog line to the back of the house (circles). A game is 6 ends with each end consisting of 6 rocks for each team. A game takes about one hour to play. Each of the two players on a team only throws from his/her end of the ice and never goes to the opposite end of the rink. The player whose turn it is to throw the 6 rocks for an end alternates throws with the opposition player. The player who is not throwing calls the game (skips) for his/her team-mate.