Northern Ontario Scores Upset

Northern Ontario’s Mike Assad opened his week at the 2013 Canadian Mixed Curling Championship with an 8-6 win over pre-tournament favourite Kurt Balderston of Alberta. Assad’s Thunder Bay foursome broke open a tie game in the 6th end with a pivotal steal of two points. Balderston replied with a deuce of his own in the next end. After Assad scored one in the 8th taking a 6-5 lead, another steal of two put him up three points playing the final end. In that 10th end, Assad needed to make a raise take-out to avoid giving the Albertans a chance to tie the game. He nailed it boosting his shooting percentage for the game to a stellar 89%. Northern Ontario is at 1-0 while Alberta starts their week at 0-1. Quebec’s Mike Fournier continued his strong start in front of a partisan crowd at the TMR Curling Club in the Town of Mount Royal (Montréal) drawing to the four foot with his final stone while facing three PEI counters in defeating Robert Campbell 10-7. Fournier leads the field early in the week at 2-0 while two-time Canadian Mixed champion Campbell falls to 0-2. Joining Quebec atop the leaderboard is Nova Scotia’s Brent MacDougall. The CFB Halifax team survived the pre-qualifying round and continues to roll defeating the Yukon’s Steve Fecteau 9-3 aided by a steal of four points in the fourth end. MacDougall has two wins while Fecteau drops to 0-2. New Brunswick’s James Grattan, an eight time Brier competitor, opened a 5-0 lead against Ontario’s Cory Heggestad after three ends. The Ontarians fought back to 5-3 after 6 ends but a deuce in the 7th and a steal in the 8th ended that game at 8-3. Grattan is 1-0 while Heggestad falls to 0-1. The NWT’s Nick Saturnino, Manitoba’s Terry McNamee, Saskatchewan’s Jeff Hartung and BC’s Tom Buchy had second round byes. Play continues all week at the TMR Curling Club in the Town of Mount Royal, Quebec (part of greater Montréal) with the championship final set for 2:00 pm EST on Saturday, November 24th. Real time results are available at www.curling.ca Sunday’s game times are 10:00 am, 2:30 pm and 7:00 pm; all times EST.