Most of the time, Nathan Young and Sam Follett are teammates. Same goes for Sarah Chaytor and Katie Follett.
But this week at the Re/Max Centre in St. John’s, they find themselves in opposition to each other and battling for top spot in the Newfoundland and Labrador mixed doubles curling championship.
The pairing of Chaytor and Young is tied with the Follett sister-brother duo for first place, both with 4-1 records after the first two days of the provincial competition.
The two teams have already had their head-to-head matchup, with Chaytor and Young prevailing in a Wednesday meeting. However, they dropped from the unbeaten ranks with an 8-7 loss to Lauren Barron and Greg Blyde in a Thursday morning game that saw the winning points scored with a steal of two in the eighth and final end.
Young skips and Sam Follett is third on a junior-aged team that competed in the Tankard provincial men’s competition earlier this month. Chaytor and Katie Follett are second and third on the reigning provincial junior women’s champions, skipped by Mackenzie Mitchell, who is also competing in the mixed doubles this week.
In all, there are 10 entries in all competing in a mixed doubles round-robin that continues with three draws today and a final one on Saturday morning. The top three finishers advance to the playoffs, with the first-place team going directly to the championship game and the other two squaring off in a semifinal.
The eventual winner will represent the province at the national mixed doubles championship in Portage la Prairie in mid March.
There are four rink at 3-2, including Mitchell and Greg Smith; the daughter-father combo of Hayley and Brad Gushue; the sister-brother team of Sarah and Ryan McNeil Lamswood of Stephenville and defending champions Jenn Harvey and Dave Thomas of Port aux Basques.
At 2-3 are Andrea Heffernan/Steve Routledge, while Brooke Godsland/Zach Young, Barron/ Blyde, and Cailey and Nathan Locke (another team of siblings) are all at 1-4.
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