Four Nova Scotia teams to compete at Canadian U21s

Four Nova Scotian rinks will represent the province at the upcoming New Holland Canadian under-21 curling championships in Fort Mcmurray, Alta.

In the women’s field, Ally Macnutt of the Halifax Curling Club will skip Team Nova Scotia 1 which features viceskip Maria Fitzgerald, second Alison Umlah and lead Grace Mccusker while Truro’s Cassidy Blades will lead third Stephanie Atherton, second Kate Weissent and lead Anna Macnutt into the national tournament as Team Nova Scotia 2.

On the men’s side, Calan Macisaac, also of Truro, skips Team Nova Scotia 1, which consists of vice-skip Nathan Gray, second Owain Fisher and lead Christopher Mccurdy. Team Nova Scotia 2 will be made up of the Halifax Curling Club rink of skip Nick Mosher, vice-skip Sean Beland, second Owen Mcpherson and lead Aidan Macdonald.

Each team will be in action Sunday when the tournament opens at the Suncor Community Leisure Centre and Fort Mcmurray Oilsands Curling Club.

Thirty-six teams from across Canada will be in the northern Alberta city for the one-week competition. By Easter Sunday, two new Canadian champions will emerge and they will have the opportunity to represent Canada on the international stage.

Ten provinces, three territories and Northern Ontario will be represented. Men’s and women’s teams are divided into two pools of nine and play an eight-game round-robin schedule, which concludes on Saturday, March 30. The top three teams from each pool advance to the playoffs and no tiebreaker games will be played. All ties are broken based on head-tohead results and if that doesn’t resolve the tie, the pre-game Last Shot Draw totals will rank the teams.

On the afternoon and evening of March 30, the secondand third-ranked teams cross over to play each other and the winners advance to the semifinal. The top team in each pool will receive a bye to the semifinals. The men’s semifinals are on that night and the women play their semifinals the following morning on March 31. The winners advance to the goldmedal games and the losers will play for bronze later that day.

Those gold-medal winners will represent Canada internationally in 2025. The women’s titleholder will travel to Italy for the 2025 world junior curling championships. It is not yet determined whether the Canadian men have qualified directly for the world juniors or if they will have to compete in the world junior B championships.