We’ve already told you about how Brad Gushue and his 12-year-old daughter Hayley are combining on one of 10 teams that will play in the 2020 Newfoundland and Labrador mixed doubles curling championship beginning Wednesday at the Re/Max Centre in St. John’s.
But Team/Family Gushue is far from the only notable entry in the competition, which will run through the upcoming weekend.
For example, Torbay teen Nathan Young, who won the mixed double gold medal with a Hungarian partner at the World Youth Olympics in Switzerland last month, is teaming with Sarah Chaytor, who also plays for the provincial junior women’s champions, skipped by MacKenzie Mitchell.
Mitchell, just back from skipping Memorial’s entry in the AUS conference championship, is also playing this week, joined by Greg Smith, who skipped Newfoundland’s entry in the Brier Canadian men’s championship.
And Sarah Follett, a member of Mitchell’s junior and university teams, is also entered along with her bother Sam, who normally is Young’s third.
So you get the idea. There are many cases where players who are normally (or have been) teammates on regular four-member teams will find themselves squaring off against each other in provincial mixed doubles.
The Folletts are one of three brother-sister combos in the championship.
Nathan Locke, another member of Nathan Young’s team, is teamed with his 12-year-old sister Cailey, skip of the reigning provincial female under-16 championships.
The other brother-sister combo is that of Stephenville natives Ryan and Sara McNeil-Lamswood, who are also one-time provincial mixed doubles champions, having won the crown in 2017.
They aren’t the only former winners of the event as the defending champions, Jenna Harvey and Dave Thomas of Port aux Basques, will be also on the Re/Max Centre ice.
Getting back to Ryan McNeil Lamswood, this is part of what is a busy curling system for the Memorial University student who was the third on the Daniel Bruce-skipped rink that was runner-up at the recent national junior men’s curling championship and on Greg Blyde’s Memorial Sea-Hawks team (Blyde skipped, but Bruce threw fourth stones) that finished second at the just-completed AUS conference championship and earned a berth at the Canadian university finals later this winter.
Blyde is also competing this week, teamed with Lauren Barron, the second for Kelli Sharpe’s women’s team.
Brooke Godsland and Zach Young, curlers who have both won provincial junior and mixed championships, are another team, as are Andrea Heffernan and Steve Routledge.
Godsland/Young and Heffernan/Routledge are out of the Re/Max Centre, as are the rest of the teams, except for the McNeil Lamswoods (Caribou CC) and Harvey and Thomas (Gateway CC).
There are three draws on opening day beginning at 9 a.m., with the others at 1 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.
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