Six Outside curling rinks had fruitless visits to the capital over the weekend with all seven division finals of the Whitehorse Curling Club’s 59th Annual International Bonspiel featuring Whitehorse teams.
In the two A Divisions, two Whitehorse rinks went undefeated for the titles.
For the men’s, the team of Richard Provan took the title while the team of Rhonda Horte captured the women’s.
Provan’s team, which included skip Steve Fecteau, lead Steve Rose, second Jamie Coles, and “expert spare” Clint Ireland, who has curled at the Brier, took the title with a 6-4 win over the team of Thomas Scoffin.
“Jamie and I play in the Friday night fun league, so our teammates definitely carried us to victory,” said Provan. “We’ve curled a little bit with Clint. I think we entered the tournament a couple years ago and got knocked out pretty quickly.
“We managed to squeak through in a bunch of games - they were all close games. So it was lots of fun.”
Team Horte, which defeated the rink of Sarah Koltun 11-4 in the final, included lead Karen Mahoney, second Helen Strong and Sandra Mikkelsen, who was skip while her sister Horte threw skip rocks.
“Lots of teams do this where one person calls a really good game but another player throw the last stones because they are the most effective with the last stones,” said Mahoney.
In the B Division finals, Blaine Tessier downed Joe Wallington 8-6 in the men’s and Pat Burns topped Megan Hough 5-4 in the women’s.
For the C Division, Paul Hunter won the men’s with a 9-4 win over Herb Balsam and, in the women’s, Leslie Grant ran off with a 9-2 win over Helen Sahagian.
For the men’s D final, Wade Scoffin slid to a 9-2 win over Paul Warner.
The bonspiel saw 42 teams - 25 men, 17 women - take to the ice, including two teams from Atlin, BC, three from Fairbanks and one from Haines Junction.
“Next year is our 60th, so next year we are looking forward to doing a real hoopla,” said Mahoney, who is also an organizer.
“And we’re hoping to not put it at the same time as the native hockey (tournament).”
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com