FORT MCMURRAY, Alta. — Corryn Brown’s Kamloops team defeated Manitoba’s Shannon Birchard 6-3 on Sunday night to win the women’s Canadian junior curling championships.
Brown’s team of 17-year-olds included third Erin Pincott, second Sam Fisher and lead Sydney Fraser.
It was B.C.’s first gold medal at the tournament since 1987 when Julie Sutton won her second straight with a victory in Prince Albert, Sask.
In Saturday’s junior men’s final, Manitoba’s Matt Dunstone scored a 4-3 victory over Alberta’s Thomas Scoffin.
Tied in the 10th end, Alberta got a break when a Manitoba peel attempt on Dunstone’s first delivery nudged one of Alberta stones in the house to bite the button, corner-frozen to a Manitoba rock.
Scoffin froze to his own frozen rock and Dunstone played a peel-weight double takeout for the win.
It’s Manitoba’s first gold medal since 2002, when Winnipeg’s David Hamblin claimed the Canadian title at Summerside, P.E.I., and the seventh Canadian junior men’s title won by a Manitoba team.
The loss ended a bid for back-to-back gold medals for Alberta at the tournament.
The championship rinks will represent Canada at the world juniors, starting Feb. 28 in Sochi, Russia, which serves as a test event for the 2014 Winter Olympics curling competition.
As for the junior women’s final, it was a tight first five ends, with B.C. taking a 1-0 lead with a single point in the fourth when Brown made an open hit while looking at three Manitoba counters.
Birchard responded in the sixth when she made a cold draw to the four-foot to score two and take her first lead of the game.
But B.C. answered back in the seventh as Brown made a spectacular triple takeout to score three and take a 4-2 lead.
In the eighth end, Birchard was looking at five B.C. rocks in the rings, but coolly drew to bite a piece of the button to score one and cut Brown’s lead to 4-3.
Brown made an open hit for a single in the ninth to restore her two-point lead.
In the 10th, Birchard had a runback double takeout to score two and force an extra end, but the rock jammed, giving B.C. a steal and the victory.
It was the second straight year that Winnipeg’s Birchard has finished second at the Canadian juniors. Playing with lead Mariah Mondor, she lost last year’s final to Alberta’s Jocelyn Peterman at Napanee, Ont.
Her team this year was rounded out by third Nicole Sigvaldason and second Sheyna Andries.
