Alberta and Manitoba stay on top

Alberta’s Glen Hansen and Manitoba’s Randy Neufeld have earned berths to Saturday’s semi finals at the 2015 Everest Canadian Seniors Curling Championships at the Thistle CC in Edmonton. Hansen stole his win from Ontario’s Jeff McCrady 6-5 in an extra end.  McCrady with Brian Lewis throwing last stones, jumped ahead 3-0 after the 4th end. Fresh from the break, Hinton CC’s Hansen scored two in the 5th end then stole two more in the 6th end when Hansen made a nice double takeout to lie four. Lewis was heavy on his draw allowing the steal. But the Ottawa CC team scored two in the 7th end to go up one then forced Hansen to take one in the 8th end.  A nice double peel by second Mike Johansen and the Ontario looked good for a winning draw to  anywhere close to the four foot except Lewis was heavy again.  With the victory, Hansen is 5-1 and will play Saturday in the men’s semi finals. McCrady must win his final game against NS and hope for a New Brunswick loss to make the semi finals as he holds the tie-breaker advantage over NB’s Tallon.  If Québec’s Butler loses his final game and McCrady wins, putting them both at 4-3, Butler holds the tie-breaker edge. Manitoba’s Neufeld was stingy tonight against Wayne Sangster of Nova Scotia. The Truro-based team scored two points in the 2nd end but did not score again winning 6-2. The La Salle skip will also play in the semi finals Saturday.  Nova Scotia is 2-4 and will not advance after Friday’s games. In other championship pool games, NB’s Wayne Tallon and Québec’s Ted Butler both faced must win situations and both came through in style. Tallon fell behind 3-2 after three ends but controlled the rest of the game scoring 7 points in the four ends for a 9-4 win over Saskatchewan’s Glen Despins. Tallon must win tomorrow or hope for an Ontario loss to move on.  Butler scored two in the 4th end followed by a steal of two in the 5th end stopping BC’s Wes Craig 6-3.  Both Tallon and Butler are 4-2 and play each other in the last game. Despins is 1-5 while Craig remains winless in six starts. Since there aren’t any tiebreaker games this year for the seniors, games played during week between tied teams will decide who advances and who doesn’t. Earlier in the week, McCrady beat Tallon while Butler beat McCrady. There was one seeding game for women tonight with Ontario’s Kathy Brown overcoming a 4-0 deficit to New Brunswick’s Shelly Graham stealing the final end for a 6-5 win. Brown is undefeated in the seeding pool at 3-0 while NB is 2-1. STANDINGS – Championship Pool – MEN Alberta (Hansen) 5-1 Manitoba (Neufeld) 5-1 Quebec (Butler) 4-2 New Brunswick (Tallon) 4-2 Ontario (McCrady) 3-3 Nova Scotia (Sangster) 2-4 Saskatchewan (Despins) 1-5 British Columbia (Craig) 0-6 STANDINGS – Championship Pool – WOMEN Alberta (Loblaw) 4-1 Saskatchewan (Inglis) 4-1 Nova Scotia (Jones) 3-2 Northern Ontario (Taylor) 3-2 British Columbia (Jenkins) 3-2 Manitoba (Link) 2-3 Quebec (Roy) 1-4 Newfoundland & Labrador (Philips) 0-5 STANDINGS – Seeding Pool – WOMEN Ontario (Brown) 3-0 New Brunswick (Graham) 2-1 Northwest Territories (Moss) 2-1 Nunavut (Ford) 0-2 Prince Edward Island (Berry) 0-3 STANDINGS – Seeding Pool – MEN Northern Ontario (Hackner) 3-5 Northwest Territories (Hudy) 3-5 Newfoundland & Labrador (Goss) 3-5 Prince Edward Island (MacDonald) 3-5 Nunavut (Sattelberger) 2-6 Yukon (Wallingham) 1-7 At the conclusion of the Championship Round on Friday, the semifinals will be held Saturday morning, March 28 at 9:30 a.m. MT, pairing 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3. The winners then advance to their respective gold-medal finals at 2:30 p.m. while the losers meet in bronze-medal games at the same time. The winners of the 2015 Canadian Seniors will represent Canada at the 2016 World Senior Curling Championships, at a site and date to be announced by the World Curling Federation. Last year’s Canadian champions, skipped by Alan O’Leary of Nova Scotia and Lois Fowler of Manitoba, will be competing in this year’s World Seniors, April 18-25 at Sochi, Russia. Since the World Seniors began in 2002, Canada has won nine men’s and nine women’s titles. Draw results for the 2015 Canadian Seniors will be instantly available at www.curling.ca. For event information, visit Curling Canada’s Scoreboard HERE. This is the first year of a three-year agreement by Everest, the first nationwide funeral planning and concierge service, to be the title sponsor of the Canadian Seniors.