It’s Alberta versus Newfoundland & Labrador – Times Two!!

Sunday’s championship finals at the Canadian Senior Men & Women’s Curling Championship in Abbotford, BC, promises excitement with both Alberta teams squaring off against opponents from the RE/MAX Centre in St. John’s. Glenn Goss, with Geoff Cunningham tossing last stones, defeated Ontario’s Brian Lewis 10-4 in eight ends in the men’s semi final. They advance to the final against Alberta’s Rob Armitage while on the next sheet, fellow Albertan Cathy King will meet Cathy Cunningham in the women’s final. NL had last stone advantage to open the game and blanked the first end. In the pivotal second end, there were seven stones in play, six of them corner frozen to each other. While lying one, Cunningham, with his first stone, elected to play a takeout on second shot belonging to Ontario and, if struck just right, would eliminate all the Ontario counters. After the smoke cleared, Cunningham had made the triple takeout laying five counters. Lewis made a nice double takeout just missing spinning on to another NL counter which may have saved the end. His shooter slowly rolled through the house leaving Cunningham an open draw for four and a 4-0 lead. Lewis missed a delicate hit and roll in the next end giving up a steal of one. In the fourth end, however, things got messy. Lewis, with his last stone had a difficult high speed takeout that could have scored the Ontario team five points but he was a bit wide and conceded another single. Lewis wouldn’t give up though and scored a pair of deuces sandwiched around an NL single. The score was 7-4 playing the 8th end where Lewis went all out for a steal.  Despite some early chances to get a good end going, things did not work out with NL scoring three and the game conceded. The championship finals will be played at 2:00pm EST at the Abbotsford Recreation Centre. For live web streaming of the final, click here. The winners will represent Canada at the World Seniors in April of 2013 at a location to be announced.