TRURO, N.S. – The Burgess girls are returning to the Canadian junior women’s curling championship.
Cousins Karlee, of Hilden, and Lindsey, of Truro, are members of the Kaitlyn Jones Halifax rink that captured the provincial women’s U21 crown on Sunday at the Halifax Curling Club.
Karlee throws second stones, while Lindsey is the team’s lead.
The foursome, which also includes third Lauren Lenentine, defeated Isabelle Ladouceur 10-3 in the Nova Scotia final to book a spot at the Canadian tournament Jan. 19 to 27 in Prince Albert, Sask.
The Jones rink enters the national competition as defending champs after winning last year’s title in Shawinigan, Que. They later went on to win the world junior championship in Aberdeen, Scotland.
“I’m really excited,” said Karlee, 20. “It’s an opportunity to wear the Nova Scotia crest again and one more opportunity for our team to maybe have a good run again this year and hopefully wear the maple leaf (at worlds), but we’ve got a lot of things to do before that happens.”
Jones suffered just one loss in eight games at the triple-knockout provincial championship, falling 7-5 to Ladouceur in the B final on Saturday. However, they atoned for that defeat with a huge victory in the final.
“We definitely didn’t play as well as we wanted to through some games, but it’s always tough going back to provincials because there is a target on our back and we know that every team steps up to play us … and a lot of teams did play really well against us,” said Karlee, who has won a record six provincial junior titles. “It was all just about perseverance and controlling our nerves; we put ourselves in a good spot so we were pretty happy with that.”
In the provincial final, Jones led 6-3 after six ends and delivered the big blow by stealing three in the seventh. The winners added a steal of one in the eighth before the teams shook hands.
On the men’s side, Graham Weagle of Chester downed four-time reigning champion Matthew Manuel of Halifax 10-4 in the provincial final to earn a berth at nationals.
