Pepsi Provincial Junior curling ch’ships start this afternoon in Ch’town

The Pepsi Provincial Junior Men’s and Junior Women’s Curling Championships, for curlers in the Under 21 age category, take place at the Charlottetown Curling Complex from December 27-30, with six junior women’s and four junior men’s teams from three PEI curling clubs entered.

There will be new winning skips this year, as reigning PEI junior women’s champ Lauren Lenentine is now curling on the defending World Junior championship Kaitlyn Jones rink out of Halifax, with Breanne Burgoyne and Rachel O’Connor from last year’s team now curling with skip Annika Kelly, while last year’s junior men’s champion skip Alex MacFadyen has moved to second stone, and is on the foursome skipped by three-time PEI junior champ Tyler Smith. Last year’s junior women’s runner-up team, and 2019 Canada Games girl’s team, skipped by Lauren Ferguson, is back in its entirety, while Mitchell Schut, skip of last year’s runner-up junior men’s squad and the 2019 Canada Games boy’s team, is back as fifth player on his brother Devin Schut’s team.

All six junior women’s contenders, including the Kelly and Ferguson teams, along with the Sydney Howatt team, with Sierra Clyke calling the game and Howatt throwing skip stones, plus the Clara Jack, Rachel MacLean, and Emily Sanderson rinks are from the Cornwall Curling Club, while the Tyler Smith and Chase MacMillan junior men’s teams are from the Charlottetown Curling Complex, the Braydon Snow team is from the Silver Fox in Summerside, and the Devin Schut rink curls out of Cornwall.

Teams in both the junior men’s and junior women’s sections will play a modified triple knockout format, where the winning team from each section also gets to compete in the next section. If a team wins all three sections, they will win the event without a championship round. If a team wins two sections, they will advance to a championship game against the winner of the other section and will take the championship if they win the game. If the other team wins, there will be a second championship game, with the winner of that game going to the nationals. If there are three separate section winners, the team that played in the most section finals will earn a bye to the second championship game where they will face the winner of a game between the other two finalists.

Live results from all Curl PEI provincial championships are available at PEICurling.com.

Previous PEI Junior Championship winners and websites are at: peicurling.com/pei-curling-history/history-menu/provincial-juniors-winners-and-past-event-websites/

The winning Junior Men’s and Women’s teams will advance to the 2019 New Holland Canadian Junior Men’s and Women’s Curling Championships, to be played Jan. 19-27 in Prince Albert Saskatchewan, co-hosted by the Art Hauser Centre and the Prince Albert Golf and Curling Club.

Draw Tree

Schedule

Jr. Men’s Games: Green background Jr. Women’s Games: Violet background
Qualifier Games have number or letter with Yellow background
Playoff games have number or letter with Light Blue background
10-end games

Date	Time	Draw	Ice 1	Ice 2	Ice 3	Ice 4	Ice 5
Thurs., Dec 27	2 PM	1		1	2	A
Thurs., Dec 27	7 PM	2		4	3	B
Fri., Dec. 28	9 AM	3			C	5
	2 PM	4		D	6	7
	7 PM	5		8	9	E
Sat., Dec. 29	9 AM	6			F	10
	2 PM	7		11	12	G
	7 PM	8		H	13	14
Sun., Dec. 30	9 AM	9		15	I
	2 PM	10		MA		WA
	7 PM	11		WB		MB

Explanation for MA/WA and MB/WB:
1. One team wins all three qualifiers: Championship Round is not required.

2. One team wins two qualifiers. They play in both X and Z (and win the event if they win either game), the other winner plays in Y (and has to win both games).

3. Three separate winners: the team that played in the most qualifying games* plays in Z and the other winners play off in X and Y. If there is a tie in number of qualifying games played, then the team that qualified earliest goes to Z and the other two teams play off in X and Y.

*Qualifying games have yellow text background on the schedule