ESTEVAN — Some of the top young curlers from east Saskatchewan were in Estevan during the weekend for bonspiels.
The CurlSask U15 triples event had four teams, while a U18 competition drew seven entries. Both events were part of a provincial tour, and Estevan marked the final stop before provincials at the end of this month.
Provincials will be an open event, so anyone within the age groups can enter, but the curlers have been vying for points through tour events to determine their seed.
The U15 event saw the Hazy Hackers out of Esterhazy defeat Curl Power from Estevan in the final. Also entered were the Cool Shots from Estevan and the Cymri Barn Sweepers from the RM of Cymri.
Triples is a new concept from Curl Canada to encourage more participation from youths. Teams are comprised of three players instead of four, and each curler throws two rocks in an end.
It also features a different way of tracking points. Instead of getting points for each end, they play three sets of two ends each. A team is awarded points if they win a set, and the third set is worth more than the first two, so all three sets are played.
The Hazy Hackers defeated Curl Power in three sets.
The U18 event featured the more traditional curling format with eight-end games and four-player teams. The squads played a modified round robin on Friday and Saturday, with each team getting four games. The top four teams advanced to the playoffs.
Team Jones from Esterhazy went 4-0 to finish first. They defeated the Callie Johnson rink from Gainsborough 9-3 in a semifinal.
The Maddy Fornwald rink out of Lampman finished second in the round robin, and they faced the No. 3 Heidi Fradette rink from Estevan in the other semifinal. Fradette won 8-6 in an extra end.
Jones defeated Fradette 8-6 in the final to go 6-0 during the week.
The Olivia Fonstad rink from Oxbow was among the other teams entered. The U18 division also drew squads from Ogema and Bruno.
