The Fort Rupert Curling Club held a mixed bonspiel Nov. 11-13 to celebrate their 50th anniversary.
The all weekend tournament featured 12 four person teams battling it out in end-to-end curling action to see who would make it into the A event finals, the B event finals, and the C event finals.
After three total games, one on Friday night and two on Saturday, it was the Maday Rink (Port Hardy) and the Lapointe Rink (Campbell River) who had collected enough wins to move into the A event finals, which took place at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday.
The game started out well for the Maday Rink, as they collected an early points lead, going up 3-0 after the first end.
In the second end, both teams had a rock so close to the button, they actually had to measure the distance to see who got the point.
The Maday Rink stole the point by the smallest of margins, and then went into cruise control from there, continuing to add to their lead over the rest of the ends.
Final score, 8-2 for the hometown squad.
After the finals, Skip John Maday explained how his team came out with the victory. “We started off with a big three ender in the beginning, and then we kinda stole one, held them to one, and then they let me have four in the fifth and that was all she wrote. It was a pretty easy game.”
Maday continued on, explaining that they made sure to not let the Lapointe Rink “build on anything they had. We just eliminated everything they tried.”
The tournament wasn’t totally smooth sailing for the Maday Rink, though. “I had a real close one against Brad Zealand,” said Maday, adding that he had to “come through a small port with a takeout to win the game, because we were down by two. It was probably the best shot I made this weekend.”
It was a tough one because “You can never count out a Zealand,” he laughed.
“The rest were all good games, close but with same kind of result. We chipped away at them until they made a mistake and then we pounced on it and got a big end.”
When asked how it felt to take out the Lapointe Rink at home, Maday was quick to reply that it was “Very good, because I played them at the Campbell River Mixed Bonspiel and they beat me there, so it was redemption time.”
