Titles up for grabs at 2024 New Holland Canadian Under-21 Curling Championships this Sunday

Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo, Alta., is ready to welcome the best U-21-aged curling teams across Canada. The 2024 New Holland Canadian Under-21 Curling Championships get underway this Sunday.

The Suncor Community Leisure Centre and Fort McMurray Oilsands Curling Club will co-host the event, welcoming 36 teams from coast to coast for the one-week competition. By next Sunday, two new Canadian champions will emerge, and those teams will have new opportunities to represent Canada on the international stage.

The men’s field is ripe for the picking after last year’s winners, Alberta’s Team Johnson Tao, have aged out of the U-21 competition. However, a pair of podium contenders from last year’s event are back in 2024 at Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo. 

Reigning silver medallists Northern Ontario and Team Dallas Burgess of Sudbury are back in the mix but with a different lineup from last year and without Burgess in the lineup. Jackson Dubsinky moves up the lineup into the skip role. While Burgess won’t compete with Northern Ontario, he’ll still be in the mix this week. Burgess has moved west to Manitoba, joining forces with the reigning bronze medallists in Team Jordon McDonald of Winnipeg as the team’s third. 

Both teams expect to contend this week, but plenty of other teams have potential, including Nova Scotia’s Team Calan MacIsaac (Halifax) and Manitoba #2’s Team Jace Freeman (Virden). Both teams were playoff qualifiers in 2023, have been on the podium at previous national events and are prepared to take the next step at the national level.

Alberta will have two men’s teams at the event. Team Kenan Wipf of Calgary earned the provincial title earlier this month. Wipf skipped his province at the 2022 Canadian U-18s and the University of Calgary at the 2023 U SPORTS curling championship. 

The provincial runner-up, Team Timothy Marin of Sherwood Park, earned a national championship ticket. Marin moved from New Brunswick to Alberta for this year’s event and represented the maritime province at the Canadian U-21s, U-18s and Canada Winter Games.

Eighteen teams of each gender are competing at the New Holland Canadian Under-21s. All 14 Member Associations (10 provinces, three territories, and Northern Ontario) receive entries. Alberta, the host province, receives an additional team. The final three spots are determined based on the accumulative standings at the past two national championships. If a Member Association declines its spot, the next highest-ranked team in the accumulated standings will receive the entry.

The women’s field is wide open for a winner after the defending champions, Team Myla Plett, did not qualify out of Alberta. Team Plett went through a year’s grind, winning both the Canadian U-21 and U-18 titles, representing Canada at both the World Juniors and Junior-Bs, and having two members represent Canada at the Youth Olympics. 

This result opens the door for two new teams out of Alberta: provincial champions Team Emma DeSchiffart of Lacombe and Edmonton and the runner-up Team Grace Beaudry of Calgary. 

It is DeSchiffart and her team’s second provincial championship victory. They won the U-18s earlier this season and competed at the 2024 Canadian U-18 championships in Ottawa.

DeSchiffart isn’t the only team from the Canadian U-18 championships making an appearance at the U-21 level. Canadian Under-18 champions Team Shaela Hayward of Carman, Man., will represent the Keystone Province after winning the provincial championship. Joining them as Manitoba 2 is Team Zoey Terrick of Winnipeg, which won a bronze medal at the 2023 U-21 championships.

Other notable entries include New Brunswick’s Mélodie Forsythe (Fredericton/Moncton), who is skipping at her third New Holland Canadian Under-21 championship, the most of any skips in the women’s field, and Quebec’s Team Jolianne Fortin of Jonquière-Kenogami, which earned bronze at the 2023 Canada Winter Games and silver at the 2024 Canadian U-18s.

Teams are divided into two pools of nine and play an eight-game round-robin schedule, which concludes on Saturday morning. The top three teams from each pool advance to the playoffs and no tiebreaker games will be played. All ties are broken based on head-to-head results and if that doesn’t resolve the tie, the pre-game Last Shot Draw totals will rank the teams.

On Saturday afternoon and evening, the second- and third-ranked teams crossover to play each other and the winners advance to the semifinal. The top team in each pool will receive a bye to the semifinals. The men’s semifinals are on Saturday night and the women play their semifinals on Sunday morning. The winners advance to the gold-medal games and the losers will play for bronze later that day.

Those gold-medal winners will represent Canada on the international stage in 2025. The women’s team will wear the Maple Leaf at the 2025 World Junior Curling Championships after last year’s team, Team Plett, finished fourth overall. The men finished on the bubble of qualifying directly into the world juniors next year. It is not yet determined whether the Canadian men have qualified directly for the World Juniors or if they will have to compete in the World Junior B Championships. Canada’s status will depend on which country hosts the world championship. For more details, click here.

For the list of teams, draw and live scores, visit the event website.

Select games from two sheets will be broadcast live on Curling Canada’s streaming platform, Curling Canada +. Sheet C will feature a complete broadcast with commentary and sheet D will be a static overhead camera broadcast.