(CurlManitoba Release) CurlManitoba has announced the top five seeds and published the draw for the 2024 Viterra Championship in Stonewall.

Stonewall will host the men’s championship for the first time.

The first five seeds are all in the top 40 of the Canadian Team Ranking (CTRS) and four of them are in the top 25.

Rated number one by the competitors in the competition is the Reid Carruthers team with 2014 Olympic Champion Brad Jacobs added to the line-up. Carruthers (2011) and Jacobs (2013) are the only former Brier champions in the field of 32 teams qualified for the Viterra Championship.

THE TOP FIVE SEEDS ARE:

#1 SEED: Reid Carruthers, long-time teammate Derek Samagalski and Connor Njegovan and Coach Rob Meakin lost the Manitoba final a year ago to Matt Dunstone. Brad Jacobs has joined the team and will skip the team for his first Manitoba championship. Team Carruthers, representing the Granite Curling Club, had early season success with a victory in the PointsBet International and are currently the #5 ranked team on the CTRS. In a modestly successful season, they qualified for the final eight playoff on four other occasions before reaching the final in the mid-January bonspiel in Lloydminster.

#2 SEED: The Ryan Wiebe team (Ty Dilello, Sean Flatt, Adam Flatt, Don Harvey, Coach Tom Clasper) lost the Manitoba semi-final two years ago and reached the 8-team championship round last season.   The Fort Rouge team has yet to taste victory this season playing a mostly out-of-province schedule. However, their record has them ranked at #15 on the CTRS. They have qualified for the final eight playoff six times with three semi-finals, including the Mother Club Classic at Winnipeg’s Granite CC, and one final appearance, at the DEKALB SuperSpiel in Morris.

#3 SEED: Braden Calvert’s Fort Rouge team includes long-time teammate Kyle Kurz with Corey Chambers and Brenda Bilawka added to the roster this year. Playing a mostly Manitoba schedule they have still achieved the #23 CTRS ranking, winning the DEKALB SuperSpiel and Atkins Classic and losing the final of two other events. Calvert and Kurz qualified for the Manitoba final four a year ago but lost the semi-final to Carruthers.

#4 SEED: Jordon McDonald, Elias Huminicki and Cam Olafson won the 2022 Manitoba U-18 and 2023 Manitoba Junior titles together. With Dallas Burgess at third and coached by William Lyburn, the Assiniboine Memorial team has achieved the #24 CTRS ranking with an exclusively Manitoba schedule by qualifying for the final eight playoff in all seven events they played. The successes included three semi-final finishes and one finalist finish and they won the MCT Showdown at East St. Paul and the MCT Shootout at Selkirk.

#5 SEED: Brett Walter, JT Ryan, and Graham & Hugh McFarlane qualified early for the Viterra Championships as winners of the November berth bonspiel in Gimli. A successful November also included victory in the MCT Curling Cup. Playing a limited Manitoba schedule, the Assiniboine Memorial team had one semi-final and one final eight finish and lost the MCT Championship final in mid-January. They are the CTRS #39 ranked team.

The Manitoba champion will represent Manitoba at the Montana’s Brier in Regina in early March, joining the reigning Manitoba champion Matt Dunstone team (CTRS #4) who have already pre-qualified.

In all 20 different Manitoba curling clubs and communities will be represented in the Viterra Championship. With four teams, Fort Rouge has the largest number of qualified teams.

(4) Fort Rouge
(3) Assiniboine Memorial, Charleswood, Deer Lodge,
(2) Brandon, Dauphin, Granite
(1) Baldur, Beausejour, Burntwood, Carman, Gladstone, Hamiota, Holland, La Salle, Pembina, St. Vital, Stonewall, Virden, Winnipeg Beach

** CTRS Rankings are as of January 29, 2024