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Yukon rink sweeps up experience in Prince George

Yukon's female curling team picked up steam with every rock they threw at the Canada Winter Games last week.
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PRINCE GEORGE, B.C.

Yukon’s female curling team picked up steam with every rock they threw at the Canada Winter Games last week.

After some lopsided losses early in the week, the Yukon rink almost posted a pair of upsets before a last place finish at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club.

“It was pretty fun. We got to meet a lot of people from around Canada, so that was pretty cool,” said skip Alyssa Meger.

“The fans were really loud, so it was kind of hard to hear (each other), but it was pretty good.”

“Our communication was better with hand signals because we couldn’t really hear each other,” said second Peyton L’Henaff. “We had to figure out hand signals.”

After six losses in their round robin, the Yukon rink, which includes third Bayly Scoffin and lead Karen Smallwood, dropped a couple close ones.

They pushed Newfoundland to an extra end in an 11-9 loss on Friday.

Yukon then lost 7-6 to Nunavut on Saturday in the last-place game. The Yukon rink scored three in the ninth end to make it 6-6 before Nunavut put one up in the 10th for the win.

They finished their round robin play with a 12-4 loss to Team Ontario, who went undefeated to win gold over Nova Scotia in the final.

“We had quite a bit of fun playing Ontario,” said Meger. “They were really nice.

“We weren’t expecting to get four on them. We thought we were going to lose because they were at the top of the pool, but we were just happy to get four points on them.”

The Yukon team was by far the youngest at the 17-and-under bonspiel. Meger and L’Henaff are 14, Smallwood 13 and Scoffin only 12.

“I wasn’t personally intimidated because we’re used to playing older teams,” said Meger. “There’s not really much competition our age (in Yukon).”

Yukon’s male rink defeated Alberta and then N.W.T. to place second last the previous week in Prince George.

“It’s been really fun, the people have been really nice,” added L’Henaff.

“We’ve had cheerleaders from other teams, which was really good because we didn’t have a lot people coming from the Yukon to watch us.”

Contact Tom Patrick at

tomp@yukon-news.com