Davidson’s Luke McCreary may have been on the losing side in five straight matches at the Saskatchewan Junior Men’s Provincial Curling Championship held at the Weyburn Curling Club earlier this month, but he still had a “lot of fun” taking part.
“It was a really well-organized and well-run event,” said McCreary. “There were a lot of good quality teams there. We were real happy (with the way) that we played. We were within a couple key shots on four different games where it could have gone either way, so the 0-5 record didn’t really represent how we curled.”
McCreary, 18, played third for Team Allan Walter at the Championship held Jan. 3 to 7 in Weyburn. The team, which included skip Walter, second Brayden Miskolzie, lead Sheldon McIntyre and was coached by Brian Champion, finished last in the “A” pool in round robin play failing to make it to the playoffs.
He said there were two pools of six teams participating at the event with the top two teams from each pool moving on to playoff action after the five-game round robin.
“It was really good,” said McCreary, who threw the fifth and sixth rocks out of eight and held the broom when the skip was throwing. “It was the top 12 teams in the province, so it was really strong competition.”
They lost their first game at the event 7-5 to Team Cole Tenetuik Jan. 3. A day later, they would lose 9-2 to eventual champion Team Brady Scharback and 5-4 to Team Kris Keating. The next day would see them first lose a close one 9-8 to Team Travis Tokarz before dropping their final game 8-5 to Team Zachary Turner.
McCreary said their team, which plays out of the Sutherland Curling Club in Saskatoon, formed this past September and includes three members of their University of Saskatchewan team. He said this was his first junior provincials, but he did suit up as a substitute for the juvenile provincials last year.
The current engineering student at the U of S said he has been curling competitively since he was a Grade 7 student at Davidson School and curled for the school team throughout his studies there.
As for the rest of this season, McCreary said his university team is currently trying to make it to the University Westerns held in Edmonton in February while they look forward to another shot at provincials next January.
“It was a great experience. Three of us are still of age to do it again next year, so we’re hoping to stick with it.”