MONTAGUE, P.E.I. — The provincial men’s and women’s curling championships begin today at the Montague Curling Rink.
Five teams are playing in the P.E.I. Scotties Tournament of Hearts women’s competition while there are 11 contesting the Tankard men’s tournament.
The Suzanne Birt women’s rink, curling out of the host Montague club this year, and the John Likely men’s team from Cornwall are back looking to defend their titles.
Birt, a 10-time P.E.I. Scotties champ, will be competing against the Veronica Smith and Melissa Morrow foursomes from the Silver Fox, the Amanda Power team from Charlottetown, with PEI junior champion skip Lauren Ferguson as an alternate, and the Tammy Dewar rink from the host club.
Likely’s team this year includes returnee Steve Burgess, along with Ryan Abraham and Jake Flemming from Tyler Smith’s championship junior team. They will be facing 10 other teams, including another Cornwall rink which includes three members of the reigning world senior men’s championship team — Ontario’s Bryan Cochrane and P.E.I. natives Ian MacAulay and Morgan Currie, along with Mark O’Rourke. MacAulay and Currie are eligible under Curling Canada’s new birthright status eligibility rule for the Brier and the Tournament of Hearts, while Cochrane would be the team’s permitted free agent.
Other teams include the Mitchell Schut junior rink from Cornwall, who were finalists in the recent Pepsi Juniors, the Steve vanOuwerkerk foursome, also from Cornwall, the Darren Higgins and Jamie Newson rinks from the Silver Fox, Charlottetown’s Philip Gorveatt, Rod MacDonald and Eddie MacKenzie teams, and the Philip MacDonald and Keith Nabuurs foursomes from the host Montague club.
Teams have been seeded in their respective modified triple-knockout draws based on cashspiel winnings, with Cochrane seeded first in the Tankard, followed by Newson, Higgins, vanOuwerkerk and Gorveatt, while Birt is top Scotties seed, followed by Power.
Draws go daily at 9 a.m. as well as 2 and 7 p.m. from the eighth through the 11th, with the championship round (not needed if a team wins all three draw sections) going Sunday at 9 a.m. and, if needed, 2 p.m.
The winning women’s team will advance to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, Feb. 15-23, in Moose Jaw, Sask., while the men’s championship team will compete in the Tim Hortons Brier, Feb. 29-March 8, in Kingston, Ont.
