SK Junior Men's & Women's Daily Blog #1

Junior Men

“Team Kleiter arrived Thursday am in Victoria. They spent a great day touring beautiful Victoria going for a 12 km walk along the Harbour.
Friday am was practice time on both arena ice and at the curling club. They had a great practice and are feeling confident and relaxed. Friday afternoon was spent experiencing the adventure of an ” Escape Room” with Team Jones for Team Sask Bonding.
Friday evening was the Ice Breaker meeting all the teams from across Canada. Looking forward to Opening Ceremonies and first draw Saturday at 130pm.”
– Team Sask

Junior Women

Many thanks to the Callie Curling Club for the terrific sendoff this past Tuesday evening. We appreciated all the well wishes and the generous financial support from the Callie, CURLSASK and CurlRegina.

Prior to hopping on the Thursday afternoon flights to Victoria, the team received a special honour from Regina’s RCMP Training Depot in the morning. Commanding Officer Brenda Lucki presented each team member with the RCMP Commanding Officer’s Challenge Coin. These coins are special and are rarely offered. The CO wished to send the team off with her version of the Lucky Loonie that is so often buried in the ice for Canada’s important hockey games. Thanks so much to Kaitlyn Jones’ Dad – Kevin who is the Chief Superintendent of Training at Depot, for arranging this very special sendoff! The coins will be definitely be on-ice for the entire competition.

We arrived on time and travelled in with the Nova Scotia Men’s team to the hotel. The bus driver detoured through Chinatown and then drove by the beautifully lit up BC Legislature for our initial welcome to Victoria. We quickly settled in to the gorgeous hotel and did a very quick grocery run.

With a 9:00AM practice it was a quick turnaround before we hopped on the bus that took us to the Archie Browning Center. What a facility!! It is stunning and we are happy to call this our second home club for the next 10 days. It is a treat to be on arena ice and the club ice is super as well. Mike Merklinger has done an excellent job to ensure everyone experiences “professional” ice.

Everyone is having fun bumping into people we have all met from other events OR Saskatchewanians going to school in other provinces such as Kristen Streifel – who did say it was strange playing in blue and gold rather than green and white.

It was fun having the afternoon off but it’s back to business tonight with the Players Meeting and the Icebreaker Social.

Looking forward to our first game Saturday evening after we have the opening ceremonies at noon.

 

Team SK – Junior Women Kaitlyn, Sara, Rayann and Shantel.