Under-18 nationals start Sunday!

Canada’s best under-18 curling teams open play Sunday in Oakville

For the first time since 2019, Canada’s best young curling teams will gather under one roof to play for national titles when the 2022 Canadian Under-18 Boys and Girls Curling Championships get underway Sunday.

The 2022 Canadian Under-18 Championships will run through to May 7 at the Oakville Curling Club in Oakville, Ont., with 42 teams (21 boys, 21 girls) from across the country competing.

It will be the fourth edition of the Canadian Under-18 Championships, and first since the 2019 event at Sherwood Park, Alta. The 2020 and 2021 events fell victim to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The field consists of 12 provincial/territorial championship winners (the Yukon and Nunavut did not send teams), with nine Member Associations able to send a second team based on their combined results from the 2018 and 2019 Canadian Under-18 Championships.

The extra teams on the girls side come from Ontario, Northern Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, New Brunswick, B.C., Nova Scotia, Quebec and Manitoba.

On the boys side, the extra teams hail from Nova Scotia, Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, B.C., Northern Ontario, Newfoundland/Labrador and Saskatchewan.

The field is being split into three pools of seven in each gender, with the pools seeded based on combined results from the 2018 and 2019 championships.

The teams will play six round-robin games within their pools, and the top three teams from each pool will advance to the single-knockout playoffs. They will be seeded one through nine based first on win-loss records, and then on Last Shot Draw distances to break ties between teams with identical records.

Ninth place will play eighth in a preliminary playoff game, with the winner moving into the quarterfinal against the top seed.

The 12 teams that don’t make the championship playoff will play down in consolation playoffs to determine the final overall standings.

All round-robin and playoff games will be eight ends.

Round-robin play gets underway Sunday at 8 p.m. (all times Eastern), with draws Monday, Wednesday and Thursday at 8:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Tuesday features five round-robin draws, at 8 a.m., 11 a.m.. 2:30 p.m.,, 5:45 p.m. and 9 p.m.

While only in its fourth year, the Canadian Under-18 Championships are already having an impact on the Canadian curling scene. The skips of the Canadian teams that will play at the upcoming 2022 World Junior (Under 21) Championships next month in Jönköping, Sweden, are both former Canadian Under-18 champions. Men’s skip Owen Purcell and women’s skip Isabelle Ladouceur both helped their respective Nova Scotia teams win Under 18 gold in 2018 at Saint Andrews, N.B.

Teams from Northern Ontario have captured two of the three girls Under 18 national titles, sandwiched around the Nova Scotia win in 2018.

On the boys side, Northern Ontario, Nova Scotia and, most recently, Ontario, have won national Under 18 championships.

Select games will be live-streamed on Curling Canada’s YouTube page.

For teams, results, schedules, live-streaming schedule (when available) and other event information, CLICK HERE.