TISDALE — The Tisdale Middle & Secondary School mixed curling team won bronze at the Saskatchewan High School Athletic Association Curling Championships in Swift Current.
The team was made up of Austin Olson, Arizona LaClare, Ty Olson and Allyssa Svenson.
“They've been curling for a long time, so it's pretty exciting to see them win,” said Sharolyn Simoneau, the team’s coach.
“They did great. They get to put a SHSAA banner up in our school gym at TMSS with their names on, so they're pretty excited about that.”
The Tisdale team had dominated round-robin play at the provincials, held March 11 and 12, winning all three of its games. In fact, all during the playoff season, they hadn’t lost a game. They advanced to the semi-final.
“They came up against Canora, who was on their game, and unfortunately, we were just a little not ourselves that morning,” Simoneau said.
Tisdale was defeated with a score of 7-3.
“That put us into the bronze medal game against Lampman, in which we were able to bring out a victory to bring home the high school bronze medal for Saskatchewan.”
Tisdale won 7-5, winning the bronze.
“They just had a tough game where, you know, things just weren't quite going their way and we got into a little bit of trouble and weren't able to claw our way back. I was pretty excited that they were able to rally,” Simoneau said.
“To go undefeated, to lose one game only in all three different playdowns is pretty amazing.”
Canora ended up taking their semi-final win and made it into a provincial gold medal after defeating Watrous 7-3.
All of the Tisdale team members are in Grade 11 and are planning to curl again next year. The coach added TMSS has some other up-and-coming curlers, so the hope is to be able to field boys and girls teams in the next season.
