Top Seeds Advance to Playoff Round
The defending champions and number one seeded Mike McEwen team (Fort Rouge) and second seed Reid Carruthers (West St. Paul) have advanced to the second stage, the playoff round, of the 2018 Viterra Championship.
Playing their second game without skip Mike McEwen, his team (BJ & Denni Neufeld and Matt Wozniak) stole one on the eighth end to take a 6-4 lead on Dennis Bohn (Assiniboine Memorial) en route to a 7-5 victory on Friday morning in Winkler.
Carruthers, playing David Bohn (Assiniboine Memorial), scored three on each of the third and seventh ends in a 10-6 victory.
Fourth seed Pat Simmons (Granite) also won on the Friday morning draw. Simmons stole one in the eighth and a pair in the ninth in a 6-2 victory over #5 seed William Lyburn (Assiniboine Memorial).
The final game on the morning draw also showed a 6-2 final score as Travis Bale (Fort Rouge) was a winner over Daniel Birchard (Pembina). In a Thursday morning game, Brchard had beaten third seed Jason Gunnlaugson to hand the Granite team their first of two losses yesterday.
The four winners return to the ice at 7:45 today when they will play the qualifiers from the “B” Side of the draw. The Friday morning losers drop into the “B” Side qualifying games at 4pm at the Winkler Centennial Arena.
