Thunder Bay curlers compete for spot at national championships as playdowns get underway
Northern Ontario curling playdowns kick off Wednesday in Little Current
Some of Thunder Bay's best curlers are hitting the ice in Little Current, Ont., this week in hopes of earning a spot in the national championships.
The Northern Ontario Curling Association (NOCA) playdowns start on Wednesday morning. Overall, 14 men's teams and six women's teams are competing for a spot in the Montana's Brier and Scotties Tournament of Hearts, respectively.
"We're really excited to be going back to Little Current," said Laura Forget, NOCA executive director. "Little Current hosted our men's provincials pre-COVID and did a fantastic job.
"So we're really excited to be going back there, really big field this year."
And Thunder Bay is well represented in that field, with five men's teams and two women's teams from the city taking part.
Among them is the Trevor Bonot rink. The team also includes Mike McCarville, Jordan Potts, and Kurtis Byrd, and won the Tbaytel Major League of Curling championship on the weekend.
Bonot said the win is a "nice confidence boost" heading into the playdowns; the team is currently seeded third.
"It just shows that we've been putting in the work, traveling a bit more than the other couple other local teams here," Bonot said Monday. "But I think we're in for heavy competition, a lot of great teams there.
"We have our work cut out for us."
Forget said it's not a surprise to see so many Thunder Bay teams in the playdowns. In fact, NOCA is honouring two well-known local curlers this year.
"Thunder Bay has always been a hotbed of curling in northern Ontario," she said. "I think we all remember back to the Al Hackner and Heather Houston days.
"Something really exciting this year is we just purchased two brand-new trophies to present to our winning teams, one in Al Hackner's name on the men's side, and one in Heather Houston's name on the women's side. This will be the first year that we present those two trophies."
Forget said all playdown games on Sheet C will be streamed on the Little Current Curling Club's YouTube channel.
"A lot of teams will likely, if they're not on that featured sheet, stream their games on their own team Facebook pages," she said. "So I would just say watch for on team social media pages for updates and live streams and stuff like that."
