The Memorial Sea-Hawks, skipped by Greg Blyde, lost the gold-medal medal this afternoon in the men’s final of the U Sports Canadian university curling championships in Fredericton, N.B.
The Blyde rink, which also includes Daniel Bruce (who throws fourth stones), Ryan McNeil Lamswood and Nathan King, dropped an 11-4 decision to the Carleton Ravens of Ottawa.
Blyde is from St. John’s, but the other three members of the Sea-Hawks team — Daniel Bruce, Ryan McNeil Lamswood and Nathan King — are from the west coast of the province. In fact, it was a Bruce-skipped rink that defeated a Blyde entry in final of the 2018 Newfoundland and Labrador junior men’s championship. But when Bruce, McNeil Lamswood and King came to St. John’s for school, they hooked up with Blyde in what has been a pretty successful venture.
The rink won the 2019 provincial junior championship and advanced to the second stage of the national juniors, finishing with a 5-5 record.
They finished third behind Dalhousie and the University of New Brunswick at the AUS championship in St. John’s last month, but with UNB already in the U Sports championship as host team and the Atlantic conference getting two other berths for the nationals, the Sea-Hawks earned a place in Fredericton this week.
Blyde and Co. were seeking a third national university men’s curling title for Memorial. A Sea-Hawks rink skipped by Colin Thomas’s took the crown in 2011 and Adam Boland’s rink did the same in 2017.
