The Peace Curling Association stopped at the Fort St. John Curling Club over the weekend for their second event of the Pomeroy Inn & Suites Peace Curling Tour for the Ryhason Contracting, Tidy Trucking, Fort Motors Fort St. John Cash Spiel.
For the tour’s second bonspiel in a row, Team Pomeroy Inn & Suites (made up of skip Kurt Balderston, third Les Sonnenberg, second Rob Maksymetz and lead Del Shaughnessy of Sexsmith) won the SunLife Financial Competitive Division on Sunday, beating Dawson Creek’s Team Steinke by a final score of 3-1.
Skip Jordan Steinke scored his only point of the match in the first end, while Balderston notched singles in the third, fourth and sixth frames.
The rink of Jordan, and second Tristan Steinke (brother), third Jason Ginter, and lead Brett Winfield reached the finals after they downed the Steinke patriarch, Tracy, 9-7 in extra-ends of an all Dawson Creek semi-final.
Darrel Veiner, also of Dawson Creek, narrowly missed a semi-final appearance losing 5-4 to Graham Powell of Grande Prairie in the quarterfinals.
Falher’s Team Turcotte won the Encana Challenge Division, beating Grande Prairie’s Team Henricks 5-4.
“It’s definitely growing per year and it’s one of our bigger bonspiels,” said Ryan Harvey, manager of the Fort St. John Curling Club. “The competitiveness to it makes it one of the better bonspiels, not saying our others aren’t, but to have 30 of the best teams in the Peace Region up here definitely says something.”
“There’s always growth and there are some of the same faces. We have junior champions, men’s champions, everything here so it’s a good opportunity, but at the same time we have people who have put in teams at club level,” Harvey added. “It’s good, and we’re trying to make it so those people that like a little competition can come out. We hope to see it grow year to year.”
Thirty teams came out for Fort St. John’s part of the Peace Curling Tour, which Harvey says is a good sign of things to come.
“There’s incentive for teams to register for all three bonspiels so we’ve seen our numbers grow year to year,” he said. “That’s good, we have 30 teams this year which is up five or six from last year.”
Curlers got to compete in some close games and enjoy some great food at a banquet Saturday night, and the championships were held Sunday afternoon.
“We like to get the curlers together and provide them with a good meal and thank them for coming out here,” Harvey said. “We hope all the curlers that came up had a wonderful time.”
The tour’s next stop will be in Dawson Creek Nov. 23 and 25 and the tour championship takes place Jan. 18-20 in Sexsmith, Alberta.
For full results visit www.peacecurl.org.
