O’LEARY, P.E.I. — Two familiar faces skipped their rinks to the provincial women’s and men’s curling championships on Saturday.
Suzanne Birt and her rink out of the Montague and Cornwall clubs defeated Montague’s Darlene London in three straight games – 12-0, 12-2 and 10-1 – to win the provincial Scotties title and secure P.E.I.’s berth at the Scotties Canadian women’s curling championship in Calgary from Feb. 20-28.
“The feeling of winning never gets old,” said Meaghan Hughes, who throws second stones for Team Birt. “We are all pretty excited, and we all had the same butterflies going into this weekend as usual. It was nice to pull it off.”
Eddie MacKenzie skipped a rink to the Tankard provincial men’s championship for the sixth time. The MacKenzie rink, which lists its home clubs as Crapaud and Montague, defeated the Blair Jay-skipped rink from the Silver Fox in Summerside 10-4, 6-3 and 8-4. All three games were decided in nine ends.
“It’s always nice to win a Tankard and get a chance to go to the Brier,” said MacKenzie, who finished runner-up to Bryan Cochrane in the 2020 Tankard. “It was nice to get some games in and have an actual playdown.”
MacKenzie, third Tyler Smith, second Sean Ledgerwood and lead Ryan Lowery will wear P.E.I.’s colours at the Tim Hortons Brier Canadian men’s curling championship, which will also take place in Calgary from March 6-14.
“It’s definitely cool to win it in the first year out of junior as a men’s player,” said Smith, who twice skipped junior teams at previous Tankards.
Jay’s teammates included third Chuck Jay, second Jon Philip and lead Glenn Rogers.
Third Marie Christianson, lead Michelle McQuaid and alternate Kathy O’Rourke round out Team Birt, coached by Mitch O’Shea.
O’Rourke played third in the provincials as Christianson could not travel to P.E.I. from Nova Scotia due to COVID-19 restrictions. She joked she played more than anticipated after joining the Birt rink this season.
“I told them they broke our contract numerous times already,” O’Rourke said with a laugh.
“Obviously, we missed having Marie here; she wasn’t able to come because of the self-isolation requirements obviously, but she was cheering from afar,” said Birt. “The girls played awesome all weekend and had some great games.”
London’s teammates are third Robyn MacDonald, second Shelley Rice and lead Gail Greene.
