Newfoundland and Labrador, with a rink that can be said to truly represent the province, plays in the semifinal of the New Holland Canadian junior men’s curling championship in Langley, B.C., today.
The Daniel Bruce-skipped team will take on Saskatchewan’s Rylan Kleiter this afternoon, with the winner moving on to face Jacques Gauthier and his Manitoba rink in Sunday’s final.
Bruce and teammates Ryan McNeil Lamswood, Joel Krats and Nathan King had an overall 8-2 record through play in the preliminary and championship pools. That included an 8-5 win Friday over Manitoba’s second entry in the event.
Gauthier and the Manitoba No. 1 team finished at 9-1, while Saskatchewan was 7-3. Those also happen to be the only two teams to have beaten Newfoundland in the competition.
Bruce and King are from Corner Brook, McNeil Lamswood is from Stephenville and Krats is a Labrador City native who once skipped teams out of Gander.
Nevertheless, the rink is based out of the Re/Max Centre in St. John’s, where Bruce, McNeil Lamswood and King are attending Memorial University, while Krats is now a Grade 12 student at Mount Pearl Senior High School.
Bruce and Co. comprise the first N.L. rink to make it this far at the national junior men’s championship since Colin Thomas and his St. John’s team played in the semifinal of the 2011 event in Calgary. And they’re looking to become only second team from the province to win a Canadian junior men’s title; Brad Gushue did it 2001 with a team that included Mark Nichols, Brent Hamilton and Mike Adam before going on to claim the world title that same year in Salt Lake City.
This Newfoundland team, which is coached by Dennis Bruce — the skip's father — brings a lot of national experience to its games. For example, this is McNeil Lamswood’s fifth Canadian junior, tourney putting him second all-time among Newfoundland junior men; he’s surpassed only by only Gushue, who appeared in six junior nationals.
This is the third time for Bruce and King, who also joined McNeil Lamswood on the Greg Blyde-skipped team that represented Memorial University and won a silver medal at last year’s U Sport Canadian university championship.
And while this is the first Canadian junior event for Krats, and he’s not yet in university, he did skip Newfoundland and Labrador’s entry in the 2019 national U18 championship.
McNeil Lamswood and King were both named to the junior men's second all-star team, with selections based on curling percentages over the past week.
The 2020 national juniors, which also involves a women’s division, began with 14 teams in both sections, each divided into two seven-team pools for preliminary play. The top four finishers in each preliminary pool advanced to the championship pool, taking their records with them. From those eight rinks came the three medal-round teams.
The team representing Newfoundland in the women’s competition earned a berth in the championship pool, but Mackenzie Mitchell’s rink, which also plays out of the Re/Max Centre, did not advance after losing all four of its games in the second phase.
That left Mitchell and rinkmates Katie Follett, Sarah Chaytor and Claire Hartlen with an overall 4-6 record. Nevertheless, they still improved on the province’s ninth-place seeding coming into this event.
Mark Noseworthy, coach of the Newfoundland women's team, was named one of two winners (one in the male division, one in the female division) of the Asham Coaching Aaward at the championship.
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