Manitoba, Alberta men on a roll at 2014 M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors

Manitoba’s Braden Calvert of the Deer Lodge CC in Winnipeg upped his record to 3-0 in Pool A of the men’s section of the 2014 M&M Meat Shops Canadian Junior Curling Championships in Liverpool, Nova Scotia.Manitoba defeated Northern Ontario’s Tanner Horgan from Sudbury 10-4, scoring three in each of the second and fifth ends. Horgan’s record is even at 1-1. Calvert shares top spot with Ontario’s Ryan McCrady, who kept pace with a solid 8-3 victory over Quebec’s Adam Freilich.  Both Manitoba and Ontario need one more win from Pool Play to advance to the championship round. Quebec drops to 0-3 and is in danger of missing that championship round. Nova Scotia’s Robert Mayhew has now won two straight games after an opening-round loss. Mayhew’s Windsor CC’s squad stole his way to a 9-2 win over B.C.’s Cameron de Jong. Mayhew stole singles in four of the first five ends, then stole three in the sixth and two more in the seventh. De Jong finally got on the board with a deuce in the eighth, at which time he conceded. B.C. is also in danger of not advancing, remaining winless in three starts. Alberta’s Carter Lautner is alone on top of Pool B after edging Yukon’s Joe Wallingham 8-6 bolstered by a count of four in the 8th end. Lautner’s is 3-0 while Wallingham drops to 1-1. In other men’s games Sunday morning, P.E.I.’s Kyle Holland earned his first victory of the championship, 11-3 over Matthew Miller of the Northwest Territories. Holland is now 1-1 while Miller drops to 0-3. Finally, Stephen Trickett of St. John’s moved his Newfoundland & Labrador team into the win column 16-0 over Jamie Airut of Nunavut. Trickett is 1-1 while the Nunavut foursome drops to 0-3. There were only two women’s games this morning with the Territories’ Carina McKay-Saturnino continuing her strong play, keeping pace with the leader in her pool (B.C.) with an 8-3 win over Sadie Pinksen of Iqaluit, Nunavut. The NWT is now 2-0 while Nunavut drops to 0-3. Veronica Smith of P.E.I. also jumped into the win column with a much-needed win over Northern Ontario’s Krysta Burns 10-4. Smith’s record is now 1-2 while Northern Ontario is even at 1-1. Round-robin games are taking place at both Queens Place Emera Centre and the Liverpool Curling Club in the beautiful South Shore region of Nova Scotia. The teams have been seeded (based on last year’s results) into two seven-team pools for each gender and will first play a six-game round robin within each pool from Saturday through Tuesday. The top three teams in each pool, plus two teams with the next best won-lost records, then advance to the Championship Round for a further four-game partial round robin from Wednesday through Friday, with their earlier records carried forward. Once the top three teams for each gender have been determined, all playoff games will be played at Queens Place Emera Centre. The women’s final is Saturday, Jan. 25, while the men’s final is Sunday, Jan. 26. Both finals will be televised live on TSN/RDS2 at 4 p.m. AST/3 p.m. EST. For the second consecutive year, the competition format involves all 14 Member Associations of the Canadian Curling Association (10 provinces, plus Northern Ontario, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon). The full scoreboard can be viewed at https://www.curling.ca/scoreboard The leaderboard can be viewed at https://www.curling.ca/2014juniors-en/standings