The Canadian Deaf Curling Championships, featuring both a men’s competition and a mixed doubles competition, were played this weekend at Morris with a pair of Manitoba Men’s teams meeting in the championship final. The Cargill Curling Training Centre in Morris is the Official Training Centre of the Canadian Deaf Curling Program.

 The gold medal, and the chance to represent Canada at the World Deaf Curling Championship in March in Banff, was won by Ross LaVallee (Shawn Demianyk, Kayle Miller, Brian Broszeit, Coach Lorne Hamblin). Team Lavalle was one up coming home with last rock and marked up the victory over Joe Comte’s foursome (Bill Kluchnik, Chris Stewart, Cam Hurst, Coach Chris Hamblin). The two teams had finished the round-robin with identical 3W-1L records but Team LaVallee was awarded the first place bye to the final thanks to a win over Team Comte. Team Comte defeated a British Columbia team (Craig Waldbillig, David Johnson, Frank Chung, Alnoor Mitha, fifth John Sigurdson) in the semi-final.

In the Mixed Doubles competition, which is new to the Deaf Curling Program, the winning team was Albertan Sally Korol and Manitoban Michael Austria. They too will have the opportunity to represent Canada in Banff. Their gold medal win came over Emma Logan/Nova Scotia & Frank Chung/BC. The Bronze Medal was won by Hannah Brown/Manitoba & Calvin Novak/Alberta.

Due to limited entries, there was no Women’s competition this year. A team has been selected by the Canadian Deaf Curling Association to represent Canada at the World event.  Emma Logan (NS) will be the skip with Holly Maschmeyer (Alberta) at second. Manitobans Hannah Brown and Susanne Beriault are the third and lead respectively.