Equal numbers of rural and Winnipeg based teams will compete in the 10-team Chicken Chef Mixed Curling Championship, March 14-17, at the Neepawa Curling Club.
The Mixed champion this spring will be the CurlManitoba representative at the 2024 National Championship to be played November 3-9, 2024 at St Catherines Golf & Country Club in St Catherines, ON.
The rural representatives in the triple knock-out event come from Arden (Kevin Paramor), Carberry (Braden Calvert), Minnedosa (Janelle Lach), and Rorketon (Bryan Preston). Paul Robertson will skip a Neepawa team in the competition.
Winnipeg clubs represented are Deer Lodge (Sean Grassie), Fort Garry (Corey Chambers), Fort Rouge (Ryan Wiebe), Granite (Mike Siwicki), and Heather (Thomas McGillivray).
The reigning Mixed champion team is not represented in the competition but three past champion skips will be challenging to return to the Canadian Mixed championship. These include 2022 champion Corey Chambers (Fort Garry) who returns with Lisa McLeod and Jolene Callum, with Ian Fordyce moving in at second. Chambers, McLeod and Callum have lost only one game in the past two Mixed championships. They were undefeated in 2022 and unbeaten going into the final a year ago.
Three-time champion (2008, 2011, 2013) champion Sean Grassie (Deer Lodge) returns with Calleen Friesen who was his lead in both 2011 and 2013. Braden Calvert, the 2019 champion and former world junior champion, is the third former Manitoba Mixed champion in the field. His team includes former Alberta champion Kelsey Rocque who was a key part of Team Manitoba-Cameron at this year’s national Scotties.
While those three former Mixed champions will get a lot of attention in Neepawa, there will be another story line which also gets a lot of attention. Carman’s Shaela Hayward will be playing third for Ryan Wiebe’s Fort Rouge team. Hayward has already won the Manitoba U-18 and U-21 championships along with the national U-18 title.
While there are instances of a curler winning two Manitoba championships in the same season, a three-time champion in the same season has never occurred in Manitoba curling history.
The Chicken Chef Mixed begins Thursday, March 14 with a draw at 7:00PM. Four teams will qualify (1 from “A”, 1 from “B”, 2 from “C”) for a Sunday Page Playoff with the final game at 4:00PM.
