Team Sask Daily Blogs ~ U18 Canadian Curling Championships

We left earlySaturdayam, took the “scenic” route through Calgary and landed safely in Fredericton earlySunday. In typical Sask fashion, we gained new fans on each leg of the trip including baby Graham & WestJet staff!

Wouldn’t you know, before our luggage even came off the carousal, we were approached by a youth curling team just returning from Scotland and traded pins in the airport!
Sunday we took a beautiful drive to Saint Andrews with a stop at Reversing falls in Saint John. We were welcomed at the historic Algonquin Resort by a round of “happy birthday” sung by Team Ackerman (Team Sask girls) for Braden’s 17th!

The Sunday evening icebreaker event gave us a chance to meet teams from all the other provinces. Both Sask teams and parents took a fun & spooky “Ghost Tour” of the Algonquin. There was a few screams from some of the players (pretty sure our fearless skip was one of them) thanks to Dwight for “bumping” the light switch!!

On Monday we picked up Coach Verne from the airport as he flew in on the red-eye from Abbotsford after competing at the Masters Nationals. We will be cheering on the girls first game tonight at 3pm Sask time and our first game is Tuesday morning (7am Sask time).
To our Provincial family….the hearts of Team Sask are with you back home. We have received a tremendous amount of support and compassion from everyone we’ve met.

It is officially day one of competition and we couldn’t be more excited. After a few days of touring New Brunswick, we were excited to finally get on the ice. We had an 80-minute practice earlier in the day, a rest, some snacks, donned our green gear and headed to the rink.We were up against Team BC (Cotter – coached by Jim Cotter) with blue rocks and hammer.The first end started out a bit red, but we turned it around and got a three.Off to a great start.With a score of 7-2 after 6 BC wanted to shake hands but rules dictate it needs to be a 6-point spread or after 7 ends. Game final was 7-4 with BC conceding after 7 end.

We are back on the ice at2:00 pmagainst NWT after participating in the official opening ceremonies earlier in the day. It will be an exciting time for our team to be a part of our larger curling family for that celebration.

Finally, we wore green ribbons on our hearts to honour and support the Humboldt Bronco’s on their tragic loss. None of us can imagine what the players, their families and friends are going through.We hope that our fellow sportsmen know that we are thinking of them and have them in our hearts and minds.

#throwingrocksathouses,

Team Skylar Ackerman – Skylar, Madison, Chantel, Samantha