Difficult opening round loss not disheartening for Canadian junior mixed doubles team

It was a rough opening game for Team Canada at the inaugural Booster Juice World Junior Mixed Doubles Curling Championship on Tuesday, but it was in no way discouraging.

The Canadian duo of Dominique Vivier of Navan, Ont., and Nick Codner of Torbay, N.L., along with coach Laura Walker of Edmonton, fell 11-5 to Bobae Kang and Har Jun Kim of South Korea in a match that was tied 5-5 after five ends.

“They’re playing a lot better than the scoreboard is showing,” Walker said of the team that didn’t give up after falling behind 3-0 after two ends. “The misses they had were just missing the rocks the wrong way. If we can just dial that in and have it be the right half-shot instead of the wrong half-shot, we’ll do some really good things.”

The South Korean twosome, particularly Kang, was shooting with pinpoint accuracy much of the game. Even when they were slightly off, they got some pivotal breaks to go their way. Kang made a fairly straightforward tap back of Canada’s second shot rock to score an opening end deuce for South Korea.

Canada had a shot for three in the second, but Vivier’s takeout attempt jammed to give South Korea a steal and the 3-0 margin.

“We knew Korea was going to be one of our toughest games, so we just wanted to play the best we could,” said Vivier, entering her third year of studies at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont.

“They’re not going to miss, so we don’t have many chances and our shots after their misses are important. I think we did pretty well. With Korea you have to be very, very accurate. We expected the ice to be bit more curling today and we got caught.”

That happened in the second and again in the third when Codner’s try at a double takeout jammed and left South Korea sitting four. Vivier had to make a pressure draw for a single.

“It wasn’t a great start for us, but you have to get your feet under you in these tournaments,” said Codner, the youngest curler ever to play in the Montana’s Brier when the then 15-year-old got into a game for Team Nathan Young of Newfoundland & Labrador in 2022.

“The first time we’ve played an international tournament. We made a lot of good shots, so it’s lots to build on. Just a few here and there got away from us.”

Team Canada pounced on two misses by the South Koreans to score four in the fifth end and pull even on the scoreboard.

“We got lucky, got one big miss out of them, got the four to get the game back even,” said Codner. “But like I said, we just struggled a bit early on.”

“That was huge for them,” Walker said of the four-ender. “They played quite well to that point, a couple of the deuces the Koreans got were a bit of cheap deuces. We played good ends, and they just managed to snag it on us.

“They’re never out of it, no matter the score,” she said of the young duo. “You saw that even down 5-1, got the four to pull even. They believe in themselves and they believe in each other and that’s all you ask for.”

“Those games happen,” said Vivier. “We learned a lot about the ice and we’ll take that into the next games. We knew this was our hardest game, so it’s in no way discouraging.”

Canada plays Romania’s Ania Bacali and Tudor Pop on Wednesday at 12:30 (all times MT).

Vivier and Codner qualified to represent Canada by surviving a gruelling 73-team playdown process that saw them finish third at 4-3 in the round-robin portion of the Under-21 World Mixed Doubles Qualifier in Summerside, P.E.I. The duo found their game in the playoffs, finally beating Sierra Tracy and Noah Riggs of New Brunswick 7-5 in the final.

The world championship is an open event with 29 teams competing, split into four groups to play five days of round-robin competition. The top two teams in each division advance to the quarterfinals Saturday at 6 p.m.

Canada is in a pool with teams from South Korea, Switzerland, Ukraine, Poland, Turkey, England and Romania. Team Switzerland and Team Ukraine also won on Tuesday, while Team England and Team Romania are 0-1 with Team Canada. Team Turkey was playing in the evening draw.

The semifinals go Sunday at 10 a.m. followed by the bronze-medal and gold-medal games at 3 p.m.

Select games are available to stream through Curling Stadium.

For the latest scores, draw and list of teams, CLICK HERE.

The French version of this story will be posted as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/?lang=fr.