Granite Curling Club’s Team Carruthers (skip Brad Jacobs, Reid Carruthers, Derek Samagalski, Connor Njegovan, coach Rob Meakin) have earned a name change. The team has become Team Manitoba with a pair of wins Sunday in Stonewall to win the 2024 Viterra Championship.
The top-seeded Granite foursome had qualified for the championship’s Page Playoff 1 vs 2 game but lost Saturday evening to #3 seed Braden Calvert and his Fort Rouge team.
That dropped them into the Sunday morning semi-final where they defeated the #4 seeded Jordon McDonald – Assiniboine Memorial team (Dallas Burgess, Elias Huminicki, Cam Olafson, William Lyburn).
The final game re-match with Calvert (Corey Chambers, Kyle Kurz, Brendan Bilawka) was tied 3-3 playing the eighth end when Team Carruthers stole a point to lead 4-3. A blanked ninth gave Calvert the hammer coming home but his team was unable to build the end. When skip Brad Jacobs sealed off the draw path to the four foot circle with his last stone, Calvert was faced with a low percentage runback triple kill. No success – Jacobs stole two more for the 6-3 win.
The Granite team will represent Manitoba at the Montana’s Brier in Regina in early March.
Reid Carruthers, who won the Brier and World Championship with Jeff Stoughton in 2011, has participated in 11 previous Briers as Team Manitoba (7), a wild card entry (3), and as an alternate in 2008 when he played his first Brier game.
Derek Samagalski has five Brier appearances as Manitoba champion and three as a wild card entry.
Connor Njegovan has four previous Brier appearances with two each as Team Manitoba and wild card entry.
While skip Brad Jacobs has represented Northern Ontario at the Brier 14 times, it is his first Manitoba championship.
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The annual Hit-Draw-Tap competition for youth curlers in Manitoba also played out Sunday in Stonewall. Earlier this year, 568 young curlers from across Manitoba took part in regional qualifying with the chance to represent their region in the provincial finals on the championship arena ice in Stonewall.
Seven regional representatives from Winnipeg and across Manitoba and a host club competitor participated in three different age categories: 6-8 years old, 9-10 years old, and 11-13 years old.
CurlManitoba organizers and former Manitoba champion Mike McEwen, who acted as the guest announcer, encouraged the kids as they concentrated on their hits, draws, and tap shots. The two older groups played on the full sheet of ice, prepared to championship standards by CurlManitoba’s internationally respected ice technician Greg Ewasko. The youngest group of curlers played “the short game”, shooting from the hack to the near set of rings.
There were trophies for the top three in each group and eight different rural Manitoba communities were represented among the nine trophy winners. Hamiota curlers took home two trophies.
The trophy winners were:
6-8 years:
1) Ben Smith (Pinawa)
2) Rowan Zegers (Riverview)
3) Leah Major (Carman)
9-10 years:
1) Bramwell Friesen (Winkler)
2) Jayce Budey (Steinbach)
3) Sam Rawlings (Hamiota)
11-13 years:
1) Atiya Jack (East St. Paul)
2) Ryan Carmicheal (Hamiota)
3) Jakob Kehler (Ste. Anne)
