Provincial titles to be decided Thursday
Teams in the Women’s Division of the Ferguson-Logan Montague Funeral Home P.E.I. stick curling championships at the Western Community Curling Club have one game to go in their double round-robin preliminary round.
The playoff placings have already been determined for the Open Division.
There are four teams in the Women’s Division, and defending-champions Gloria Clarke and Ruth Stavert are tied for first place with Cornwall clubmates Etta Reid and Elaine Hughes after two days of play. Both teams have 4-1 (won-lost) records while Ann Barwise (Maple Leaf) and Audrey Callaghan (Western) have secured the third and final playoff spot at 2-3. They finish off round-robin play against the defending champions Thursday at 11:15 a.m. Western’s Bernadette Foley and Frances Ellsworth will be looking for their first win of the competition, when they wrap up play against Hughes and Reid.
The women’s double roundrobin winner will earn a bye to Thursday’s championship final at 4 p.m. The second- and thirdplace teams will meet at 2 p.m. for the right to play the firstplace winner in the final.
Open Division
The 12 teams in the Open Division were divided into two pools of six. After single roundrobin pool play, teams from the host Western Community Curling Club captured four of the six playoff positions. Defending-champions Walter Callaghan and John Vincent won Pool A with a 5-0 record, followed by Floyd Stewart and Gordon MacDonald from Montague at 4-1 and Western’s Victor and Dianne Hogan at 3-2. In Pool B, Winston Keough and Harvey Holm from Western were awarded first place after going 4-1. Barry Craswell and Sterling Stratton from Cornwall took second, also with a 4-1 record, and Roger Gavin and Eddie Bernard from Western finished third with a 3-2 summary.
The men’s playoffs start at 10 a.m., with Pool B’s secondplace team of Craswell and Stratton playing third in Pool A, the Hogans, and Pool B’s thirdplace team of Bernard and Gavin facing Pool A’s secondplace team of Stewart and MacDonald. The first-place winners get a bye. Callaghan and Vincent will play the winner of the Craswell/Stratton vs. Hogans in one semifinal, and Keough and Holm will play the other quarter-final winner in the 2 p.m. semifinals The championship game goes at 4 p.m.
The top four Open Division teams, and top two Women’s Division teams, advance to the Maritime stick curling championships in Chester, N.S., from March 23 to 25.
The winners of the Open Division also earn the right to participate in the 2018 Canadian Open stick curling championship in St. Albert Alta., from April 2 to 5.