NAPANEE, Ont. – Alberta’s Brendan Bottcher beat Northern Ontario’s Brennan Wark 9-6 in the men’s final of the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Junior Curling Championships on Sunday.
It is the first Canadian junior title for the Edmonton rink consisting of skip Bottcher, third Evan Asmussen, second Landon Bucholz and lead Bryce Bucholz.
Bottcher took a 3-0 lead after two ends, but Thunder Bay’s Wark rebounded with two points in the third end and a steal of one in the fourth.
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Bottcher and Wark traded deuces in the fifth and sixth ends, then Bottcher opened up another lead with two more in the seventh.
Wark narrowed the lead to 7-6 with one in the eighth, but Bottcher took two in the 10th to seal the win.
Alberta won its nation-leading 16th title since the championship began in 1950, but the first since 2007 when Charley Thomas won the second of back-to-back Canadian titles in St. Catharines, Ont. Thomas’s 2007 foursome was also the last Canadian team to win the world junior men’s titles.
Bottcher’s team, from the Saville Sports Centre, will now represent Canada at the 2012 World Junior Curling Championships, March 3-11 in Ostersund, Sweden. Canada has won a leading 16 world junior men’s titles since 1975.
One province swept both the men’s and women’s championship for the third straight year. Alberta’s Jocelyn Peterman of Red Deer won the women’s final over Manitoba 12-6 on Saturday. She will also represent Canada at the junior championships.
In 2011, Saskatchewan’s Braeden Moskowy and Trish Paulsen won Canadian titles in Calgary, while in 2010 in Sorel-Tracy, Que., Ontario’s Rachel Homan and Jake Walker won their respective championships.
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