Lethbridge sweeps high school zones
LETHBRIDGE The Catholic Central Cougars mixed curling team had nothing to lose.
So they went out and won it all.
The Cougars rink of skip Ryan Kawa, third Sam Lychak, second Logan Boras and lead Ella Clarke defeated the Chinook Coyotes 6-3 during the gold medal game of the Alberta Schools Athletic Association South Zone playdowns Wednesday afternoon at the Lethbridge Curling Club.
“We came in with nothing to lose,” said Kawa, whose team is now off to provincials in St. Albert March 1-3. “So we ended up leaving with a banner. Chinook played awesome. It was a tough game, the best we’ve ever played.”
The Cougars zone title was one-third of a gold medal sweep for Lethbridge schools Wednesday.
The LCI Rams boys team won their second consecutive gold medal thanks to a 10-2 win over Medicine Hat, while the Winston Churchill Griffins captured the girls championship with an 8-6 win over the Taber W.R. Myers Rebels.
With a rink made up of three-quarter rookies, it was understandable the Cougars took a casual approach to the past two days.
“This is the first year we’ve been together, but this is about my sixth or seventh year of curling. The rest of my team is all first-year curlers,” said Kawa. “We all really showed up today. I’m really proud of my team. In the round-robin we didn’t play as well as we should, so we took the long road to provincials, but we’re going to St. Albert.”
In the boys gold medal game, the Rams blew open a 2-2 with some timely steals and deuces on their way to their second zones gold medal in as many years.
“We started off with two in the first end, it was a little shaky, but we came back and got two,” said skip Ayden Whittmire. “We forced them to a blank in the next end and then they made a couple good shots and got two. From then on we stole a couple of points and got our twos.”