Eden boys (and girl) top SOSSA curling

The Eden boys curling team put on an impressive show Thursday at the Southern Ontario Secondary Schools Association championships at the St. Catharines Golf and Country Club.

The rink, skipped by Ellise Rigby, defeated Westdale 10-4 in the semifinals and then blanked Saint Michael’s 10-0 in the championship game.

“I was really happy. Our whole team showed up and played really well,” Rigby said.

The team’s recipe for success is simple.

“We are really good communicating as the rocks go down and when they start to break or curl. It makes calling easy and sweeping easier on everyone.”

Eden is looking forward to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations March 22-25 in North Bay.

“We just want to play as well as we did here and represent St. Catharines,” she said.

Rigby is thrilled to finally get a chance to go to OFSAA after the previous two were canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I am so excited and I am really looking forward to it.”

Missing the last two wasn’t fun.

“It was kind of sad because I was at home but I got a chance to watch a lot of games and work on my strategy. It all worked out.”

The Grade 12 student has been curling for four years. She started curling in Grade 9 at Eden and then liked the sport so much she joined the St. Catharines Curling Club.

This year, she found herself a member of Eden’s boys team.

“We didn’t have enough curlers to have a girls team so I tried out for the boys team and made it.”

She skips the rink but leaves the throwing of the final rocks to vice Alex Leblanc.

“I really like the strategy component of curling and I find last rocks a lot of pressure. My vice Alex takes care of the last rocks for me and he makes a lot of really, really good shots.”

Eden went 4-1 in Niagara Region High School Athletic Association play and edged Collegiate 8-7 in the Zone 4 final.

Other members of the Eden team were second Liam Fletcher, lead Cooper Rorison and spare Tavish Stewart.

Saint Michael defeated Westlane 10-4 in the SOSSA semifinals. The team is made up of skip Jordan Howcroft, vice Raimy Hachmi, second Max Mancuso and leads Andrew Karagiannis and Dylan Di Pietro.

“I played by myself in a league last year and then this I came to the school and it was ‘You know what. Let’s start curling’ and the four other curlers had never touched a broom in their life,” Howcroft said. “I believed in it and they are athletic people. They started practising, they picked it up really fast and it actually looked like something.”

The second-year curler wasn’t wrong.

“We had an undefeated season, we won the NCAA (Niagara Catholic Athletic Association) and obviously and we came into the previous game against Westlane as underdogs,” Howcroft said. “They have been curling all their lives and we were just there to have fun. It was a good game. We had our heads up high against Eden but they have been curling forever. We were just proud to make it this far.”

Members of the Zone 3 championship team from Westlane were skip Maxton Gervai-Walsh, vice Marko Nguyen, second Andy Trac and leads Ian Thiang and Andrea Topp.