Canadian women play for gold at World Juniors

TALLINN, ESTONIA – The Canadian women’s team will join the men in playing for the gold medal at the 2015 World Junior Curling Championships. Edmonton’s Kelsey Rocque will defend her World Juniors title on Sunday. A win would not only mean a gold medal, but also that Rocque would become the only other female skip to win back-to-back world junior titles since Scotland’s Eve Muirhead in 2008 and 2009. Rocque, along with Danielle Schmiemann, Holly Jamieson, Jessica Iles, alternate Kristen Streifel and coach Amanda-Dawn Coderre, punched their ticket to the finals with a solid 9-2 win over Scotland. “We just came out firing this game and got fortunate with a couple uncharacteristic misses by Scotland,” said Rocque. It was an aggressive start to the game with Scotland throwing a guard right off the bat. After juggling the rocks around in the house, Canada settled for a single to open up the scoring. The second end saw Canada force Scotland to draw to the four-foot for a single point to tie the game up. The Canadians spread out its stones out around the house in the third end, making it difficult for the Scottish team to remove multiple rocks and Canada picked up a big three-ender to take a 4-1 lead. After a blank in the fourth end, the Canadians forced Scotland to throw against three for a single point in the fifth. The tables were turned in the sixth when Canada found itself hitting for a single against a couple Scottish rocks to take a 5-2 lead. The Scottish team’s fate was all but sealed on its last rock in the seventh when a missed run attempt gave Canada a steal of two and furthered its lead to 7-2. Another steal of one in the eighth by the Canadians saw the gloves come off and handshakes by Scotland. The women are ecstatic to be guaranteed a medal at the World Juniors. “There’s always a bit of pressure carrying Canada’s colours,” said Rocque. “Now we’re going home with a medal, so it’s pretty amazing.” The Canadian men’s team from Winnipeg, Braden Calvert, Kyle Kurz, Lucas Van Den Bosch, Brendan Wilson, alternate Colton Lott and coach Tom Clasper, will play the winner of Sweden/Switzerland in the gold medal match on Sunday at 9:30 a.m. local time. Canadian teams will be attempting to sweep the world junior men’s and women’s titles for the sixth time; the only other nation to have captured double gold is Scotland in 1993. Previous Canadian tandem champs were in 2003 (Marliese Kasner [Miller], Steve Laycock), 2001 (Suzanne Gaudet, Brad Gushue), 1998 (Melissa Adams [McClure], John Morris), 1994 (Kim Gellard, Colin Davison) and 1988 (Julie Skinner [Sutton], Jim Sullivan). The World Junior Curling Championships will be broadcast on the World Curling Federation’s YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/WorldCurlingTV The men’s gold medal match will be broadcast at 9:30 a.m. local (3:30 a.m. EDT). The women’s gold medal game will be broadcast at 2 p.m. local (8 a.m. EDT). For the full game and broadcast schedule information, go to: https://wjcc2015.curlingevents.com/schedule For even more of an insider look, Streifel, women’s team alternate, will be keeping a blog of the team’s adventures in Tallinn. Read all about it here: https://k-streif.blogspot.ca This story will be posted as soon as possible at https://www.curling.ca/?lang=fr