St. Albert’s medal contenders are dressed for success at the Dominion Curling Club Championships.
Wearing the coveted Team Alberta jackets at nationals is skip Lauren Jenkyns, third Kathy Piper, second Laurie Schreiner and lead Diana Backer.
“We’re extremely excited,” said Schreiner, prior to the team’s Wednesday night league game at the St. Albert Curling Club. “I remember the first year we went to cities (Edmonton and area Tournament of Champions) and how proud we were to have our St. Albert jackets on because we were representing St. Albert at cities. Now it’s a whole new jacket we’re wearing, and it’s Team Alberta jackets. We’re still representing our club and St. Albert, but now our province too. It’s like wow! It’s just crazy. Unbelievable.”
The fifth annual Dominions starts Monday at the Fort William Curling Club in Thunder Bay, Ont. and the finals are Nov. 23.
The competition features women’s and men’s rinks that won their respective club championships. A playdown format produce champions from all 10 provinces and three territories, plus a separate entry for northern Ontario.
“These guys are club curlers, just like us. They’re going to be good and we just have to play our game shot for shot and see what happens, but we want to be in the final game. That’s our goal; make it to the end,” Schreiner said.
The St. Albert foursome qualified for nationals last month by going 4-0 at provincials in Fort St. John. In the final they edged Tiffany Steuber of Spruce Grove 5-4 in the showdown between two of the three Northern Alberta Curling Association reps at provincials.
“All four of our games were close and we tried not to get into too much trouble,” Schreiner said. “In our final game Lauren didn’t even have to throw her last rock so that just shows how well we did. We just played a shot for shot game.”
Alberta was one of the few provinces to declare their Dominion champion in the fall instead of last winter.
At northerns in March in Sherwood Park and the team’s regular skip, Christina Monk, at the controls for the Jenkyns, Piper and Schreiner trio, the perennial President’s Cup playoff champions at the St. Albert Curling Club finished 4-1 as the B1-event qualifiers for provincials.
“Every year we’ve always tried to do one step better than the year before and this time that’s what we did,” Schreiner said. “We feel like we made a double leap this year by going to provincials for the first time and winning it and now we’re off to nationals. We still can't believe it.”
Monk’s pregnancy forced the team to switch things up for provincials.
“We could either do it two different ways where we brought in a skip or got Lauren to step up and all of us move up. She wanted to do it and we thought she could do it too so we all moved up and brought in Diana,” Schreiner said. “We’re extremely proud of how she did and how we did as a team.”
Backer was welcomed with open arms by the winners of the 2013 St. Albert Centre Ladies Bonspiel and semifinalists at the 50th annual Tournament of Champions.
Backer is the most experienced of the bunch curling on the national stage as a silver medallist at second with the Deb Santos’ rink of St. Albert at the 2013 Canadian Senior Curling Championships.
Backer also the coached the Team Canada ladies at the second annual World Deaf Curling Championships in Switzerland this year and the Jasper Place-based rink return home with silver medals.
Backer curls Wednesday nights at the Granite so her ice time prior to provincials was limited to some practice sessions and one league game as a spare.
“We asked her to join for her experience and she is a really good curler too. She didn’t hesitate at all. She wanted to join us,” said Schreiner, a 54-year-old bookkeeper for Kichton Contracting Ltd.
The tireless sweeper and Piper are longtime rinkmates as winners of seven-straight President’s Cup and the 2010 Tournament of Champions. Piper was the skip in place of the pregnant Monk, as the line-up of Jackie Rae Greening, Nicole Bellamy and Schreiner celebrated the second Tournament of Champions victory by a St. Albert rink since Cathy King won the inaugural ladies event in 1993.
“Kathy and I have been together through this from the beginning and we’re the best support team for each other both on and off the ice. This kind of friendship and support will be a great asset (at the Dominions),” Schreiner said. “We’re all very, very excited to be experiencing this together and look forward a great week of curling.”
Jenkyns, a happy-go-lucky curler who is known to giggle in the hack before delivering a shot, is the youngest on the team at 25 but already has three President’s Cup on her resume, in addition to another four as lead for Doug McLennan’s powerhouse St. Albert mixed rink.
In league play Wednesday the Dominion reps are undefeated with Cindy Bobowik on board in Monk’s absence.
HOG LINES: Profits from nationals are re-directed to spinal cord injury chapters across Canada and developmental curling initiatives.
Teams were required to help fundraise and the St. Albert ladies collected more than $1,300 through a wine basket raffle.
All expenses for the women’s and men’s teams at nationals are covered. The St. Albert curlers took time off from their jobs in pursuit of a Dominion championship.
