CurlManitoba Release: Brandon Curling Club will host the Nature’s Bounty Club Championships October 28-31 as 28 Men’s teams and a dozen Women’s teams from across Manitoba gather to vie for an entry in the 2021 Everest Canadian Club Championship.

The event is the first of two to be held this season for the competitive club-level curlers. These October Men’s and Women’s championships are happening because of covid-enforced postponement last spring. The winners in Brandon will have an opportunity to represent Manitoba at the Nationals in Ottawa in late-November. A second club champions’ playoff will take place in March of 2022.

The women’s competition in Brandon offers no fewer than four Canadian and Manitoba champion teams. Marlene Lang’s St. Vital foursome would be considered defending champion as they won in 2020 in Melita but did not have a chance to compete at the national level due to covid-cancellation. With one player change, the Lang team also won the 2015 Manitoba title.

Among the challengers are the last eight Manitoba champion teams. Lang in 2015 and 2020; local favourite Stacey Fordyce and her Brandon team won the 2013 and 2017 Manitoba and Canadian titles; Tracey Andries and her Fort Rouge team won Manitoba and Canada in 2016 and also won Manitoba in 2014; and Deb McCreanor’s LaSalle team were the 2018 Manitoba champions.

In fact only two of the champion teams since the inaugural event in 2009 are not represented in Brandon when you include Lori Pelissier who skipped a team to victory in 2012 and Fordyce’s win in 2010 with a slightly different team.

The 2020 champion Andrew Wickman is absent from the men’s field. However the finalists in Melita, Trevor Loreth and his Granite team, will be among the teams to beat in Brandon. Unlike the Women’s field, only one intact Men’s champion team will compete this weekend – the 2019 champion Derek Blanchard and his Assiniboine Memorial foursome. Riverview’s 2017 champion skip Mark Anderson returns with one member of his former champion team.

Scattered throughout the men’s field are a handful of individuals who have won the Club Champions event in the past along with some former Manitoba junior and mixed champions and many former Junior Men’s and Men’s champion competitors.

The championships have been presented as an open-entry event as it is too early in the season to have tried to conduct qualifying events. In the men’s event this weekend are representatives of 13 rural Manitoba clubs and seven Winnipeg clubs. In the women’s event are six rural Manitoba clubs and four Winnipeg clubs. Overall, 24 different Manitoba curling clubs and communities will be represented in the competitions.

(CurlManitoba Release) Beth Peterson and her Assiniboine Memorial team of Jenna Loder, Katherine Doerksen and Melissa Gordon & Fort Garry’s Corey Chambers, with Julien Leduc, Devon Wiebe and Stuart Shiells won the provincial curling championship berth bonspiels hosted by the Steinbach Curling Club on the October 15-17 weekend.

Team Peterson was undefeated in the six-team women’s event while Team Chambers had a single loss in the 10-team men’s event.

In the Scotties berth playoff round, Team Peterson faced Kristy McDonald and her Granite team (Lisa Blixhavn, Lindsay Warkentin, Raunora Westcott) twice on Sunday, winning both times with key three-enders. In the early game Sunday, Team Peterson scored three coming home to tie and then stole a point for a 9-8 victory. In the final, Team Peterson stole a three on the fifth end to take a 6-3 lead enroute to an 8-6 win.

Team Peterson will join the teams of Tracy Fleury, Mackenzie Zacharias, Darcy Robertson, and Kristy Watling who have already qualified to compete in the Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts presented by Bayer in Carberry, December 14-19, 2021.

The national championship Scotties event takes place in Thunder Bay, ON, January 28 – February 6, 2022. Reigning Manitoba champion Kerri Einarson, as back-to-back Canadian champion, will compete in Thunder Bay as Team Canada.

In the first round Viterra berth bonspiel playoff game between unbeaten teams, Chambers surrendered a three-ender coming home on Jacques Gauthier’s last rock double kill for a 6-5 Gauthier (Jordan Peters, Brayden Payette, Cole Chandler & Coach John Lund) win. Team Chambers bounced back to shut out Team William Lyburn 5-0 in the semi-final to earn a re-match with Gauthier.

Chambers led 7-6 coming home without last rock. Facing five Gauthier counters, he made a perfect freeze to a Gauthier stone on the tee line in the four-foot circle. It left Gauthier nothing but an attempt to blast the rock loose but he was only able to move it about two feet sideways and scored just one to force an extra end.

On the extra end, Chambers made a last rock short angle raise take-out for a single point and an 8-7 win.

On the men’s side, Team Chambers is the sixth team to qualify for the 2022 Viterra Championship in Selkirk, January 25-30, 2022. They join the teams of Jason Gunnlaugson, Mike McEwen, Braden Calvert, Jordon McDonald, and Ryan Wiebe who have already qualified.

The National championship Tim Hortons Brier is set for Lethbridge, AB, March 4-13, 2022.