Junior curling update

It has been a busy season thus far with the Elmira Junior program; we have nearly 60 children in the program, many of whom are participating in the sport for the first time.

On the weekend of November 28-30 Elmira hosted the second annual OJCT bantam cash bonspiel, with participating teams from across southern Ontario including communities such as Niagara Falls, Toronto, Whitby, Penetanguishene, and Hamilton. We sincerely appreciate the financial support of our sponsors: Frey Building Contractors of Hawksville, Century Group Financial of Kitchener, Adventure Guide of Kitchener, Rudow’s CARSTAR Autobody in Elmira, Martin Mills of Elmira, the Kiwanis Club of Elmira, and Programmed Insurance Brokers of Elmira. With that support we were able to raise the first-place prize money to $500, a sizable prize for a bantam boys or girls team. In addition we would like to thank Wes Johnson of the OJCT for his support of this event, especially for setting up live scoring on the OJCT web site that was greatly appreciated by relatives and friends who were unable to make it to Elmira to watch in person.

Our continued success with this bonspiel means that we anticipate holding this event again in 2015. Entries will be accepted in the spring once a tentative date can be confirmed, based on the 2015-16 OCA calendar.

Winners of the 2014 edition were team Jaime Mitchell of Burlington in the boys’ draw, and Emma Clendenan of Glendale in the girls’ draw. Congratulations to all of the participants for a fine weekend of curling, including Team Anika Molenaar of Elmira and Team Veronica Bernard of Richmond Hill.

Other events

The previous weekend (November 23) saw the junior curlers take to the ice to enjoy Glow-in-the-Dark curling, following the Glow-in-the-Dark bonspiel held the previous day. Many thanks to Melody Bridgen, Colleen Coghlin and the rest of the coaching staff for orchestrating and supervising all the young curlers as they got to experience glow-in-the-dark curling for the first time.

This past weekend – December 13-14 – saw a number of Elmira teams participate in various events. Team Andrew Paulley, with Sam Domaratzki at third, Ryan Paulley at second, and Nate Wells at lead participated in a one-day open event at the London Curling Club in London and came away earning top honours overall. In Milton, who were hosting their annual Little Rock bonspiel, the team from Elmira skipped by William Henry with Larissa Musselman at third, Quinn Caplice at second, and 8-year-old Leia Wrigglesworth at lead went 1-1, earning a 6-2 win in the opening draw but losing their second game 6-5 to finish in third place overall. Finally, the K-W Granite Club in Waterloo hosted their bantam cash spiel on December 13-14 with youth from Elmira on three rinks: Team Molenaar, skipped by Anika Molenaar with third Emma McKenzie, second Kate Martin, and lead Alison Poluck in the girls’ event; Team Veronica Bernard, skipped by Veronica and representing the Richmond Hill curling club; and finally Team Andrew Bauman from Listowel with Thomas Kraemer of Elmira throwing third stones. While none of the young teams above qualified for the playoffs, they each learned a variety of lessons and gained some valuable experience which will be exceedingly helpful with bantam zones beginning in mid-January.

January and February will be exceedingly busy months with the Junior program. In addition to a variety of Little Rock bonspiels (Brampton, K-W Westmount, Elmira) coming up, there are also bantam interclub events with our next installment this coming weekend (December 20) in Orangeville. In addition, bantam zones and regionals run in mid-January, with Teams Paulley and Bernard entering Zone 12 representing Elmira, Team Molenaar entering Zone 14 via Mount Forest, and Team Bauman also entering zones from Listowel.