Alberta and Ontario to face off for New Holland U-20 Men’s Championship

What started as an 18-team event has been whittled down to the final two. 

Alberta #1 and Ontario #1 will face off Saturday morning to for a gold medal and a national title in the men’s division of the New Holland U-20 Canadian Championship. 

While one semifinal was a lopsided affair, the other involved a steal in an extra end. Regardless, the two provincial winners have a chance to become Canadian champions on Saturday. 

“We just needed to get eight good rocks on the sheet and make him throw his last one,” said Evan MacDougall, skip of the Fergus, Ontario team of his extra end steal over Quebec’s Raphael Tremblay. “We did that, and we got a miss. That was enough.” 

Tremblay had a chance to win the game with a double takeout on his last rock in the ninth end. It ran a bit wide, and the double jammed, leaving the Ontario counter in the back of the eight-foot. 

MacDougall, Dylan Stockton, Evan Madore, and Carson Kay advance to the final with a 5-4 win. 

“Now, it’s just one more game,” said MacDougall. “We’re just really excited. We know we’ve got a medal, but we really want the gold, so we’re going to try to go out and enjoy ourselves out there. The crowd was great tonight, and we want to feed off that again.” 

“This is going to be my last U-20 game ever,” MacDougall continued. “And I get to do it with three guys I love so much. It’ll be lots of fun.” 

The other men’s semifinal was an all-Alberta affair, with two Edmonton-based teams skipped by Peter Hlushak (AB#1) and Jaxon Hiebert (AB#2). 

Hlushak, Sahil Dalrymple, Lucas Sawiak, and Varyk Deopker jumped out to an early lead and hung on for a 7-2 win over their provincial rivals. 

“We had a good start,” said Hlushak. “We just tried to emphasize staying calm and playing as a team. We’ve had a lot of sudden-death games in a row, so we were prepared for it.” 

After losing two games early in the week, Alberta #1 took a six-game winning streak into the semi, with the win against Alberta #2 extending the streak to seven. They hope to make it eight in the final Saturday.  

“Making the final feels great, but it doesn’t mean anything until we go out and win tomorrow,” said Hlushak. “We’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing, and hopefully go win one more.” 

Hlushak didn’t want to speculate or handicap tomorrow’s matchup. Ontario won their round-robin matchup 8-6. 

“We’re just playing against the rocks. We just have to make shots,” he said. “We know what we have to do to try to win. And we know we can. If we play like we can, we’ll have no problems.” 

On the women’s side, the qualifying games concluded with Quebec #2’s Jolianne Fortin beating Nova Scotia #2’s Rebecca Regan advancing to the semifinal against Alberta #2’s Sienna Androschuk. Manitoba #1’s Shaela Hayward took down Newfoundland and Labrador’s Cailey Locke to advance to the other semifinal vs. Nova Scotia #1’s Cassidy Blades. 

Women’s semifinals will take place at 9:00 am ET, with the men’s final starting at 11:00 am ET. The women’s follow will start at 3:00 pm. 

Scores and schedules can be found at curling.ca/scoreboard while live streaming (finals only) can be found at Curling Canada’s YouTube channel.