For Immediate Release
Fifteen of Manitoba’s best young curling teams will compete at Winnipeg’s Heather Curling Club, October 28-30, to determine Manitoba’s entries in the Canada Winter Games in Summerside, PEI in late February.
Manitoba’s Canada Games Trials will feature eight U-18 women’s and seven U-18 men’s teams competing in a full round robin in each division. Only the host Heather and West St. Paul clubs are represented in both competitions. Morden, Morris, Portage. Virden, and St. Adolphe will also have teams in the men’s division while Winnipegosis, Altona, Carman, Springfield, St. Vital and Granite have entries in the women’s division.
The men’s field in the Canada Games Trials is an experienced group at their age level. All but five of the listed 28 players competed in the 2022 CurlManitoba U-18 Championship last April and three of the playoff teams are well represented.
Two members of the champion team, Jace Freeman (Virden) and Elias Huminicki, have joined forces with Jack Steski, who was on the finalist team last spring, and Rylan Graham. Luke Robins (West St. Paul) and Logan Strand, also on the finalist team, have joined forces with Rylan Campbell and Logan Zacharias. Ronan Peterson (Heather) returns with his intact 4th place team including Nick Senff, Roan Hunker, and Nathan Kelly.
Nash Sugden (Morden) and Colton Olafson (Portage) both return with intact teams while Zach Norris (Morris) returns with a new team but one team-mate, Ethan Brandt, from the 2022 championship. St. Adolphe’s Raphael Malo is the only skip who did not compete in the earlier event.
In the women’s field, about two-thirds of the players from the championship last April will compete in the Canada Games Trials, again including representation from all of the playoff teams. St. Vital’s Grace Beaudry, the finalist skip last April, skips a team which includes Cassidy Dundas and Tessa Terrick from the champion team, and Lauren Evason, who was also in the playoffs. The fourth playoff team, skipped by Altona’s Dayna Wahl, returns with the same line-up including Piper Stoesz, Anna Ginters and Gillian Hildebrand.
Carman’s Shaela Hayward skips the same team she led in the spring event. Granite’s Bethany Allan and Heather’s Rylie Buchalter each have three of the same players while Shayna Benson of Winnipegosis, has two experienced players in Cloe Haluschak and Laina Leadbeater.
Julia Van Ryssel (Springfield) and Karys Buchalter (West St. Paul) will skip teams new to the competition at this age level.
The winning teams will join Manitoba’s Canada Games team and will prepare for the (to-date) biggest event of their young lives in a winter long training program under the mentorship of CurlManitoba’s High Performance Director Jill Officer. The training program will feature fitness testing and training, nutritional workshops, sport psychology sessions, strategy sessions, technical refinement and brushing enhancement.
