THE CHAMPS ARE HERE 

TEAMS REESE-HANSEN AND McDONALD TAKE HOME CHAMPIONSHIP BELT IN U-25 NEXTGEN CLASSIC 

The first two champions have been crowned at Curling Canada’s U-25 NextGen Curling Classic in Edmonton. 

Victoria, B.C.’s Team Taylor Reese-Hansen finished off an undefeated run through the event with a convincing win over Edmonton’s Gracelyn Richards.  

“We’re really excited that we were able to come in and meet our goals for the weekend,” said Reese-Hansen after the final. “We’re still figuring out our new team. We came in knowing that we could compete, but the main goal was learning to play together and to get comfy.” 

Reese-Hansen, Megan McGillivray, Kim Bonneau, and Juliana McKenzie punctuated the win with a big score of four in the sixth end, and a steal of two more in the seventh. That was enough for Team Richards who conceded after the seventh end.  

“Four-enders were kind of our thing this week,” said Reese-Hansen. “Across all of our games, we were able to put a few of them on the scoreboard. In this game, we just took advantage of a few uncharacteristic misses from them, and it was really nice to have an easy draw for a big score.” 

The win qualifies Team Reese-Hansen for $6,000 in NextGen funding and a berth in the PointsBet Invitational, which is to take place in Calgary starting September 25. 

“We’re competing in Edmonton again next week,” said Reese-Hansen. “But then we’ll be home and have a couple weeks to put some work in before heading to Calgary. We’re excited!” 

In the men’s event, Winnipeg’s Jordan McDonald (with Dallas Burgess, Elias Huminicki, and Cam Olafson) avenged their only group-stage loss with a win over London, Ont.’s Jayden King in the final.  

Although King was victorious in their Pool 2 matchup, Team McDonald won the main event, taking home the $6,000 in NextGen funding and the berth in the PointsBet Invitational. Team King will earn $4,000 for their runner up finish. 

“All around, it was a fantastic week for us,” said Jordan McDonald. “It’s great to start the season like this, and hopefully we’ll be able to build on this moving forward as we’re getting started in our men’s career.” 

Three of the four players on Team McDonald have aged out of the U-21 range, and thus the foursome is moving on to the men’s ranks, where fresh-out-of-junior teams can frequently take some lumps early on. 

“We’re still a young team, just starting our men’s journey,” said McDonald. “The funding definitely helps, but we’re excited to see what we can learn from some of the Curling Canada coaches, and the other people involved in the NextGen program.” 

Team King seemed to control the game early on, but the tables turned in the second end when McDonald make a long angle runback to score on his last shot in the fourth end. That would tie the score at 1, but then Team McDonald would steal the fifth, the sixth, and two in the seventh. 

“We had a lot of games this week that were that kind of a grind,” said McDonald. “We’ve been working on being patient and just waiting for our chances. Team King played really well in both games, but we just got a couple of breaks and took advantage a bit better in this game. We just had to wait for our chances.” 

Earlier in the day McDonald defeated Calgary’s Team Cole Adams in the semifinal, while Team King knocked out Kitchener, Ont.’s Team Sam Mooibroek. Team Reese-Hansen beat two-time defending champions Team Serena Gray-Withers, while Team Richards took down Sudbury, Ont.’s Team Emma Artichuk. 

Now that the championship belt has been presented, the third leg of the NextGen Classic will get underway. The Mixed Doubles event starts Friday night, featuring 20 pairs from across the country. Four pools of five will be narrowed town a quarterfinal eight, with semis, and finals on Monday. 

All games will be streamed on the Curling Stadium Youtube channel found here: https://www.youtube.com/@CurlingZone 

Scores and draws can be found at http://curling.ca/scoreboard