Elementary curling championships sees double the competition

There has certainly been some shuffling of the chairs on the deck of the elementary curling scene this year.

After finishing fourth in 2013 in a reduced field of 13 teams at the Rainbow Elementary School Championships, St. Paul The Apostle from Coniston featured a pair of medal-winning rinks in the 15th annual local bonspiel this past weekend at the Sudbury Curling Club.

The St. Paul's No. 2 team (Cooper Boyd, Keegan Winters, Joey Perela, Logan Lalonde, Daniel Langdon) captured gold, beating the defending champions from Little Current (Morgan Hall, Robbie Norris, Mackenzie Cortes, Mason Collins) 6-4 in the final.

Boyd and company scored two in each of the first two ends, watched Team Hall bounce back for three in the third before exchanging single point tallies in the final few ends.

Both teams had topped the standings after their three round-robin games on Saturday, finishing with 43 points each to lead the way as the competition nearly doubled in size, up to 22 teams this year, including entries from all four local school boards.

St. Paul No. 1 team (Jamie Smith, Kendra Carrière, Madison Villeneuve, Destiny Chaykowski) doubled the medal haul for the Coniston crew, jumping out to a 7-1 lead and outscoring the Churchill Chargers (Lauren Rajala, Hailey Kitlar, Emma Wydra, Arianna Radey, Maheen Awadia) 8-3.

The quartet of rinks were the only four to win all three of their round-robin games, with the preliminary standings behind them including the following schools:
5th — St Denis No. 1 — 31 pts
5th — St Denis No. 2 — 31 pts
5th — Little Current No. 2 — 31 pts
8th — Macdonald-Cartier — 29 pts
8th — Walden Public — 29 pts
10th — A.B. Ellis — 27 pts

Previous event champions have included the likes of Tanner and Jacob Horgan, both of whom are currently in Nova Scotia representing Northern Ontario at the 2014 M&M Meat Shops Canadian Junior Curling Championships.