Team Tardi is gunning for the playoffs at the 2017 VoIP Defender World Junior Curling Championships, held in Gangneung, South Korea.
To get there, they’ll have to win a tiebreaker game against Norway later today (Thursday, 4 p.m. PST).
Led by skip Tyler Tardi, a Cloverdale resident, the team is representing Canada at the tourney.
After nine round-robin games, Team Tardi scored a record of six wins and three losses. The team is currently tied for fourth with Norway in the 10-team event.
Early Thursday, at 2 a.m. PST, Team Canada suffered an extra-end 9-8 loss to Scotland.
“We’re a little disappointed obviously,” Tardi told Curling Canada. “We would have liked to be in the 1-2, but we never signed up for the easy road. We’ve got to look forward and not back.”
“I think we just got a little unfortunate with the ice, but they played great,” he added. “The ice was tough but that’s how the game is sometimes. I guess we’ll find out (in the tiebreaker against Norway) how we’ll recover from this (loss).”
In the round-robin tourney, Team Canada beat Sweden, China, Italy, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey, and lost to host Korea, the U.S. and Scotland.
Team Tardi, which represents the Langley and Royal City clubs, won the 2017 Canadian Junior Curling Championship title with a 9-7 victory over Team Ontario on Jan. 29 in Victoria.
In Korea, the World Juniors tourney is the official test event for the 2018 Winter Olympic curling competition, which will be staged in the same building in Gangneung.
Team Tardi is posting photos, game results and a diary on its website, Teamtardicurling.ca. The tournament website is Worldcurling.org/wjcc2017.
tom.zillich@thenownewspaper.com
