Canada’s Best Curling Club Teams Gather for National Championship
Canada’s best club-level curling teams return to Alberta this weekend for the Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships at West Edmonton Mall's Ice Palace.
Fourteen men’s and women’s member association teams (10 provinces, three territories and Northern Ontario) will take part Nov. 20-26.
“My two bits of advice are to watch out for Team Alberta — they are always a tough out, and particularly so on home ice — and pay attention to reports on ice conditions, as I bet the playing surface will be a bit on the softer side,” says PointsBet Canada head trader Corey Travers.
On the women’s side, Team Alberta features skip Vanessa McConnell, Tia-Jayne Clark (third), Valerie Ekelund (second), and Alice MacKay (lead), with Lindsay MacDonald (alternate) from North Hill Community Curling Club in Calgary.
On the men’s side, it’s the team from Irricana Curling Club in Irricana, Alberta – Robert Johnson (skip), Lyle Kent (third), Steve Thomas (second), and Nathan Relitz (lead).
The Everest Canadian Curling Club Championships are for recreational, club-level curlers who don’t have the time or resources to compete at the high-performance level.
A spokesman for Play Alberta, the province’s only regulated online gambling website, says it will not have markets on this year’s championships.
Curling is a sport deeply embedded in Canada’s identity. The sport is played in every province and territory and 1,000 clubs. More than 300 hours of Curling Canada events air on television each year, and the national championships for both men’s and women’s score big ratings.
The Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club hosted the event in 2021, with Nova Scotia’s Team Nicholas Deagle of the Bridgewater Curling Club and Northern Ontario’s Team Tracey Larocque of the Fort William Curling Club in Thunder Bay winning the men’s and women’s titles, respectively.
