A "Sudbury Saturday Night" it was not in Victoria (B.C.), at least not from a local curling perspective.
An impressive week of competition would see both the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club rink skipped by Krysta Burns (Megan Smith, Sara Guy, Laura Masters) and the Copper Cliff Curling Club men's team of Tannor Horgan, Jacob Horgan, Nicholas Bissonnette and Maxime Blais advance through to their respective semi-finals at the 2017 Canadian Junior Curling Championships.
Unfortunately for both teams, the trail in their hunt for a national crown would end there, albeit in vastly different games. One end spelled disaster for the Horgan crew, in great shape in a titanic battle with Ontario's Matthew Hall, as Northern Ontario held a 3-1 lead heading into the seventh end.
One key miss was all that it would take to open the door for Hall to completely change the context of the game, as Ontario scored four to swing a two point deficit into a two point lead.
The teams traded points in eight and nine, but Horgan and company were not about to slip quietly into the night, scoring two in the tenth and forcing an extra end. But Hall, who opened the week with a 7-4 win over the Sudbury lads, was not about to let the advantage of the hammer go to waste, securing the point that he needed to advance to the final with a 7-6 win.
Interestingly enough, all three of the medal winning teams came from the same initial pool, as the Horgan rink was in tough right from the outset, facing Ontario (silver) and British Columbia (Tyler Tardi - Gold).
After returning home with silver medals in 2016, Team Horgan added bronze to their collection this year, though the silver lining surely lies in the fact that this entire lineup can return intact to try and complete their podium medal set in 2018.
On the ladies side of the draw, the Burns foursome would see their riveting if not surprising run to the playoffs halted with a 7-3 loss to Kristen Streifel (Alberta) in the semi-finals on Saturday.
Dropping three of their first four games, the Idylwylde reps ran off a string of seven straight victories, one that featured an 8-5 triumph over New Brunswick in a tie-breaker game, just to earn a berth in the championship side of the draw.
That run ran into some major hurdles midway through the game against Alberta, as Streifel tied the contest at 1-1 with last rock in the fourth end, but then followed it up with a steal of two, another steal of two, and a final steal of one, leading 6-1 after seven ends of play.
It was simply too big a hole to dig out of for the NOCA champs, who still managed to crack the championship draw for the first time ever, for any of the four Sudbury women.
