From Jan. 10-14 the Northern Ontario Mixed Doubles Curling Championship was held at the Stratton Curling club. The event featured a team from Stratton, one from Fort Frances and another from Sudbury.
The tournament was a double round robin in which each team played each other twice with the team with the best record qualifying to go to the Mixed Doubles Nationals in Fredricton, NB from March 17-22.
Coming out on top was the sibling team of Trevor Bonot and Jackie McCormick who grew up playing at the rink in Stratton. According to McCormick it was a special treat to play a high-level event at home. The Times reached McCormick by email the week after the event.
“It was great to play in my home club! We had good crowds out to watch each of our games and it’s always fun to play in front of fans that are rooting for you to do well. I have been throwing (or at least playing with) rocks there since I was a toddler, so it was pretty special to win a provincial in the same place I used to ride the rocks on my belly as a child. Making it even better was doing it with my brother and on the sheet that has a custom house (the rings on the curling sheet) dedicated to my late Dad.”
The siblings won their first match against the Sudbury duo of David Daoust and Manon Paquette 7-6 but lost their second to the Fort Frances team consisting of Victoria Beaudry and Chris Sliver 9-8. McCormick says after the hiccup in the second game they were able to pull things together to finish strong especially as they know each other so well, they usually play as a foursome with two others in the mixed four-person game and have represented Canada at the international level in that discipline.
“We did start out slow. This was my first time playing doubles and I had to figure out the flow of the game etc. But Trevor and I have played together so much that it didn’t take long to get in a groove. We know so much about how each other plays and thinks that sometimes we can communicate with few words, if any. We also have a lot of experience and are really good at just letting things go. We do not stress too much about what is happening on the ice, as at the end of the day, it’s just a game.”
Team Sliver-Beaudry finished second in the group with a 2-2 record while the pair from Sudbury were 1-3. With the two best records, the two local teams faced off in a final on Sunday morning. After taking four points in the first end, the pair from Stratton never looked back and took the final by a score of 9-0 in five ends.
McCormick says they are planning to make a family trip out of the Mixed Doubles National spiel in March and they are also looking forward to playing on arena ice which will certainly play different than the rink in Stratton.
“I have never been to a mixed doubles national, so all of it! We are travelling and staying as a large family group, so I’m looking forward to that for sure. I’m also very much looking forward to playing on arena ice, there should be lots of curl and I enjoy being able to hear the fans. We will have the opportunity to play against players we haven’t played before, so that is always fun. It is always an honour to represent Northern Ontario, and I always look forward to putting on the green and gold.”
