Plenty to cheer for

Four of the 18 teams at this year's Scotties have Island connections

Four teams at this year’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Calgary have Prince Edward Island connections.

Curling Canada recently announced the full field of 18 teams that will be competing at the Scotties, which will take place Feb. 19-28.

The Birt rink, representing the Montague and Cornwall clubs, won the provincials last month in O’Leary. The team includes skip Suzanne Birt, third Marie Christianson, second Meaghan Hughes, lead Michelle McQuaid, alternate Kathy O’Rourke and coach Mitch O’Shea.

Summerside native Erin Carmody will play third for Team Nova Scotia. Daryell Nowlan, son of Summerside’s Lou and Marg Nowlan, will coach the Jill Brothers-skipped squad.

Albany resident Alison Griffin is the second for Nunavut’s Lori Eddy rink from Iqaluit. Griffin competed with Nunavut in 2019 and 2020.

The Mackenzie Zacharias rink, which won the 2020 world junior championship in Russia, received one of the three wildcard berths, which were determined by using the 2019-20 Canadian team ranking system. New Dominion’s Lauren Lenentine is the squad’s lead but holds the broom for skip rocks.

The field was expanded to 18 teams for this year only to accommodate some teams that didn’t get an opportunity to compete for their provincial or territorial championship due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 18 teams will be split into two nine-team pools with the seedings based on their 2019-20 rankings.

They will play a full round robin within their respective pools, and then the top four teams in each pool will move on to the championship pool and play four more games against the teams from the other pool. Their preliminary pool records will be carried forward.

The top three teams will then make the playoffs. The first-place team will go straight to the gold-medal game at 9:30 p.m. Atlantic on Feb. 28, while the second- and third-place teams will meet in the 3:30 p.m. semifinal, also on Feb. 28.

The familiar four-team Page Playoff format couldn’t be used because it takes two extra draws, and with the expanded field, there wasn’t time available in the schedule, and it would have forced teams to play more games in a limited amount of time.

Kerri Einarson’s rink from Gimli, Man., is the defending champion.

CONTRIBUTED New Dominion’s Lauren Lenentine is shown after winning her second world junior curling gold medal on Feb. 22, 2020, in Russia. The P.E.I. native is one of several Islanders who will play on other teams at the Scotties in Calgary later this month.