Canada has a bronze medal in curling at the Winter Youth Olympic Games thanks in part to some Whitehorse talent.
Skip Thomas Scoffin and his three teammates finished third with a 6-4 win over Sweden in mixed curling on Wednesday in Innsbruck, Austria.
The team scored one in the fifth end to tie the match 4-4 and then stole one in the sixth and then again in the eighth to win.
The Canadian rink defeated the Czech Republic 7-6 in the quarter-final before losing 8-2 to Italy in the semifinal, placing them in the bronze game.
Scoffin led the team to second in their pool in the opening round-robin with five wins and two losses. For second, Canada defeated Japan (9-4), Russia (7-1), Italy (6-0), Germany (6-4) and Great Britain (8-2). They opened with a 6-5 loss to Austria and later lost 6-5 to Sweden.
On the team with Scoffin was B.C.‘s Corryn Brown, the girls’ gold medal skip at the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax. At just 15, Brown was also the runner-up at the B.C. junior championships, a 20-and-under tournament, two years ago.
Throwing lead was Emily Gray of P.E.I., who two years ago was her province’s under-15 champion.
The other male on the team was Derek Oryniak of Manitoba, a bronze medal winner at the Canada Games a year ago.
Scoffin, 17, is the youngest male curler to skip for a team at the Canadian Junior Curling Championships, captaining a team at just 12.
He has also curled at two Canada Games and three Arctic Winter Games, winning two silvers and a gold at the Arctic Games.
He will be back with his regular Yukon boys rink as he competes in his sixth Canadian Junior Curling Championships at the start of February in Napanee, Ont. Joining him at the junior nationals are third Mitchell Young, second David Aho and lead Will Mahoney.
Scoffin is not the first Yukoner to compete at the Youth Olympic Games. In 2010 Pelly Crossing’s Danielle Marcotte took part in the inaugural Summer Youth Olympic Games in Singapore as Canada’s only pistol shooter. Marcotte, who won two of Yukon’s three gold medals at the 2011 Canada Games, finished in fourth.
Contact Tom Patrick at
tomp@yukon-news.com