CANADA UNDEFEATED & PLAYOFF BOUND AT WORLD JR. MIXED DOUBLES

Canada’s impressive run continued Thursday at the Booster Juice World Junior Mixed Doubles Championship in Edmonton. 

Two more decisive wins improved Brooklyn Ideson and Owen Henry to a perfect 5-0 record, and clinched first place in Pool D, ensuring them a spot in the playoffs. 

In the morning, the Canadians from Ilderton, Ont. took on Finland’s Lara Sajaniemi and Santeri Jokiharju and emerged with a convincing 10-4 win.  

“We had a good game against Finland this morning,” said Henry. “After a bit of a slow start, we worked hard to figure out the differences in a couple of paths and did a great game of consolidating everything for the second half.” 

“We experienced some changes in the ice against Finland that we hadn’t seen yet,” said Ideson. “So it was good for us to have a game like that to be able to trust what we were seeing and make some adjustments.” 

In the evening draw, Canada jumped out to a 5-0 lead in the first end over New Zealand’s Ellie McKenzie and Jed Nevill then never looked back. After four consecutive steals by the Canadians, the Kiwis were able to put a point on the board in the sixth before conceding the 9-1 defeat. 

“We’re doing a lot of things right and building in the right way towards the playoffs,” said Henry. “We’re communicating well and making it easy to get the rocks into the right places.” 

The win guarantees the Canadians a spot in the quarterfinal, even with one game left to play in the round-robin stage. Their perfect record guarantees first place in the pool, even should they lose to last-place Slovenia on Saturday morning, as the Canadians would have the head-to-head tiebreaker advantage in any scenario. 

“Top of the pool was the goal for the round robin at the start of the week,” said Henry. “It’s a pretty cool feeling to know we’ve booked our spot and we can sleep easy knowing we will be playing to get into a medal game on Saturday evening.” 

Canada has Friday off from competition.  

“On a day off you never want to sit around and watch tv all day so it’s important to get moving and keep the curling mode on,” said Henry. “I think I’ll spend the afternoon playing some mini golf against my dad to make sure the competitive juices keep flowing, and then come together for dinner as a team to make sure we are ready to go for Saturday.” 

Ideson’s plans are different, but with a similar philosophy. 

“I think there’s probably a trip to the West Edmonton Mall in my near future,” she said. “And maybe a little trail-walk to keep the blood flowing for a good night’s sleep before Saturday.” 

Their game vs. Slovenia is scheduled for 11:30 MT on Saturday. Playoffs begin at 8:00 pm MT that night. 

For scores and schedules, visit https://livescores.worldcurling.org/wjmdcc/default . For streaming, go to Youtube and find Curling Stadium Edmonton.