Down to eight teams, the 2024 Manitoba Men’s Championship began a new double-knockout playoff round Friday evening in Stonewall and the fans at Stonewall’s Veteran’s Memorial Sports Complex got more than their money’s worth.
The feature match-up was Team Carruthers against the young Jordan McDonald team. In the tenth end, needing a point to tie, McDonald played a runback on a centre guard which killed the two Carruthers counters and moved two more Carruthers stones. They had the one and there was a measure for a pair to win. The measure went Team Carruthers way and the McDonald team built an end on the eleventh which was looking good until Jacobs threw a quadruple take-out hit to lie one. With his final stone, McDonald buried a draw and forced Team Carruthers skip Brad Jacobs to draw the four-foot circle for an 8-7 victory.
In other games Riley Smith also needed an extra end for an 9-8 win over Brett Walter; Ryan Wiebe defeated Greg Todoruk 8-6; and Braden Calvert was a 12-3 winner over Jeff Stewart.
The 9AM Saturday draw will identify the first two qualifiers for the Page Playoff Championship round. Team Carruthers will play Riley Smith and Braden Calvert will play Ryan Wiebe.
The 9AM elimination game matchups will be Greg Todoruk vs Jeff Stewart and Jordon McDonald vs Brett Walter.
The third & fourth championship qualifiers will come from the 2PM draw.
On the Friday 8:30am draw, the “A” side qualifiers were Riley Smith-Charleswood, with a score of three coming home to beat Team Carruthers-Granite; Ryan Wiebe-Fort Rouge (7-5 over Justin Richter-Beausejour); Braden Calvert-Fort Rouge (5-2 win over Greg Todoruk-Dauphin); and Jordon McDonald-Assiniboine Memorial (6-2 over Brett Walter-AMCC) .
On the Friday 4PM draw, Carruthers (9-2 over Logan Ede-Stonewall), Todoruk (7-0 over Steve Irwin-Brandon), and Walter (9-2 over Cale Dunbar-Brandon) all bounced back to qualify for the playoff round through the “B” side of the draw. Richter was defeated 7-6 by Jeff Stewart-Gladstone.
Prior to the Friday evening draw, CurlManitoba announced the results of the players’ selection as the recipient of the annual Pat Spiring Memorial Award. Justin Richter was the curler chosen, for the second consecutive year, as the one who best exemplifies the late Pat Spiring’s ability, competitive spirit, love of the game, and respect for the traditions & spirit of the sport of curling.
