Thomas seizes junior curling title

CBC Sports: Thomas seizes junior curling title

WebPosted Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:37:32 EST
CBC Sports

Alberta’s Charley Thomas and his rink came back from a personal tragedy to win the men’s final of the Canadian junior curling championships Sunday in Thunder Bay, Ont.

* RELATED: CBC Championship Curling

Thomas avenged a round-robin defeat with a 7-2 victory over British Columbia’s Ty Griffith at the Port Arthur curling club.

Earlier in the week, the Alberta rink learned that 52-year-old Doug Reynolds, father of lead Kyle Reynolds, was struck and killed by a car while attempting to cross a Grand Prairie street on Tuesday night.

* FROM JAN. 28, 2006: Selzer wins junior curling crown

The foursome, which also includes Geoff Walker at third and Rollie Robinson at second, went undefeated from that point on, winning their last five matches for an overall 9-4 record.

“Kyle, my lead, his dad passed away about halfway through the tournament,” Thomas said to Mike Harris of CBC Sports after the win. “We were 4-4 and we just wanted to make a good showing and represent Alberta proud and now we’ve done it.

“What a great run. I’m so proud of the guys.”

Five stolen points led to the lopsided score in the final, though the game was tight until the seventh end.

Alberta jumped ahead with single points in the third and fourth ends.

“If the ice was curling like the girls’ final was, we really wanted to go after them,” Thomas said. “It was curling awesome and the speed was great so it made for a really fun final.”

The 20-year-old Griffith of Kelowna, B.C., turned the tables in the fifth and sixth, tying the game.

But Thomas was undeterred, and cited a shot in the fifth when asked to describe a possible turning point.

“I think it was when I made that cut-turn freeze through the port,” he said. “I think that really turned our hopes around.”

Alberta broke the game open by scoring a pair in the seventh and stealing another deuce in the eighth for a 6-2 lead.

Griffith and his rink beat Newfoundland and Labrador’s Alan Hamilton 13-5 Thursday night to win the men’s draw with a 10-2 record and automatically qualify for the final. Thomas beat Ontario’s Codey Maus 7-6 in the semifinal.

Reynolds will attend his father’s funeral this week.

Competitors in both the men’s and women’s championship wore black ribbons the rest of the tournament.

The winners of this weekend’s Canadian finals advanced to the 2006 world junior curling championships March 11-19 in Jeonju, South Korea.

Mandy Selzer of Saskatchewan earned a 10-6 victory over Manitoba’s Calleen Neufeld to lead her rink to the worlds.