The 2021-22 season will be a busy one for junior curlers in the province of Saskatchewan.
The first major events of the campaign will run from Oct. 27-31 as the Melfort Curling Club will host the junior men’s open provincial championship and the junior women’s open provincial championship will take place at the Tisdale Community Curling Club.
“Melfort and Tisdale both have great facilities to accommodate the large amount of junior teams that we are expecting, and they’ll be congregated in the same geographical area, so it should be a great event,” CURLSASK event manager Bruce Korte said.
“We tried to get them close together as there’s a lot of parents that have their children competing in the men’s and women’s event, so this allows them to travel to both events.”
Tisdale was originally scheduled to host the 2021 junior provincial championships, along with the 2021 senior men’s, senior women’s and mixed doubles provincials, this past February, while Melfort was slated to host the masters provincial championship.
However, those events were all cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It happened to work out nicely that we were able to give those clubs the chance to host a provincial event again this season,” Korte said.
The winner from each provincial open will then go on to represent Saskatchewan at Curling Canada’s 2022 World Junior Curling Championship Team Qualification Event, which is slated to take place at the Granite Curling Club in Saskatoon from Nov. 22-27.
“It’s a unique situation as Curling Canada doesn’t have a team for the upcoming worlds,” Korte explained. “The way things have shaken out here, the winner of the qualifying event in Saskatoon will then go be our next Team Canada.
“That will be taking place at the same time as the Canadian Olympic Curling Trials (which will be held at the SaskTel Centre), so Saskatoon is definitely going to be the place to be if you are a curling fan.”
CURLSASK will also be holding another junior provincials in February 2022, with the winner of those events going to the nationals and representing Canada at the 2023 World Juniors.
As part of Curling Canada’s restructuring of junior curling, the winner of each national championship will represent their country at the following year’s world championship, which is a format the organization previously used from 1974 to 1994.
Registration for both junior open championships is now open and be accessed online at sk.curling.io/en/competitions
CURLSASK followed up their junior open provincial announcement on Wednesday as they revealed that the Assiniboia Curling Club will host the 2022 Viterra Scotties from Jan. 5-9.
This will mark the third time that Assiniboia has hosted the women’s provincials as Stefanie Lawton won the previous events at the facility in 2005 and 2015.
The 2022 Scotties Tournament of Hearts will be held in Thunder Bay, Ont. from Jan. 28 to Feb. 6.
