Northern Ontario takes down traditional rivals at M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors

The Northern Ontario women team won the battle of Ontario Sunday night at the 2014 M&M Meat Shops Canadian Junior Curling Championships in Liverpool, N.S. Krysta Burns and her Idylwylde Golf & Country team from Sudbury made a strong play to reach the championship round with a solid 11-5 win over previously unbeaten Molly Greenwood of the KW-Granite Club in Kitchener in the traditional rivalry between the North and South. The win moves Burns to 2-1 while Greenwood is at 3-1. In another more modern rivalry, the Yukon’s Sarah Koltun knocked the Northwest Territories’ Carina McKay-Saturnino from the ranks of the unbeaten with three in the eighth end followed by a steal of two in the ninth for a final score of 10-5. NWT is 2-1 and Yukon stays in the hunt at 2-2. Finally, with only two men’s games Sunday night, one featured an upset by the Northwest Territories’ Matthew Miller, who edged territorial rival Yukon skipped by Joe Wallingham 7-4. It was Miller’s first win (1-3) while Wallingham dropped to 1-2. P.E.I.’s Veronica Smith stayed in the hunt in Pool B Women with a convincing 10-3 win over Newfoundland & Labrador’s Sarah Hill. Smith evened her record at 2-2 while the St. John’s team fell to 0-3. New Brunswick’s Jessica Daigle joined the win column with a come from behind win over Manitoba’s Meaghan Brezden. A score of three in the seventh put her in the lead for good. The final score was 8-5. Daigle is 1-2 while Manitoba split their two games today evening their record at 2-2. B.C.’s Kalia Van Osch moved to three wins against a single loss by virtue of a 13-5 rout of Saskatchewan’s Kristen Streifel. Saskatchewan is now 1-2. IMG_6396 In the final women’s game of the evening, Alberta’s Kelsey Rocque remained unbeaten, winning 15-2 over Sadie Pinksen of Nunavut. Alberta is 3-0 while the young Nunavut team is 0-4. The final game of the evening featured Tanner Horgan of Northern Ontario improving to 2-1 in defeating Jamie Airut of Nunavut 10-2. 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/