Centre Dufferin girls curling team compete at CWOSSA

Written By Brian Lockhart

The Centre Dufferin District High School (CDDHS) Royals girls curling team competed in a regional competition against seven other District teams at the Central Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association (CWOSSA) bonspiel held in Orangeville on Mar. 1 and 2.

The CDDHS team had almost no pre-tournament competition this year as other schools failed to enter teams in District 4 competition.

They practiced on their own and managed to play some exhibition games prior to CWOSSA.

It was a quick learning curve as three of the four members of the Royals team did not have prior curling experience, but they managed to work together and learn the skills required to compete on the ice sheets.

Team members include Viola Brown, Charlotte Miller, Julia Fintelman, and Audrey Hawkins.

“In the fall, I sent out a note that I'm starting out curling,” explained coach Jessica Morris. “At Centre Dufferin we run it as more of a club as we want encourage as many kids to come out as possible. From there we determine over the course of our practices, who is going to represent us as our team for districts. What we able to do this year, is connect with some of the closer clubs that are out of our District, like Orangeville, who had a team, and try to do a couple of exhibition games. We only got one exhibition game in this year. This year is a building year for us because we had the last two years off for COVID. We didn't have a District championship this year because there were no other schools with a team.”

A team from Mount Forest was going to enter, but their local curling club had to shut down after having problems with its ice plant, and the high school withdrew from the competition.

On the Centre Dufferin team, skip Viola Brown was the only member who had extensive experience playing the sport. Viola, a Grade 10 student, has been playing the sport since she was five years old and was introduced to the sport by her parents.

“The entire team has never played a game before, I'm the only one who knew how to curl,” Viola explained. “Around three or four month ago we started practices. Because there are no other teams in our District, we came straight to CWOSSA.”

Since the team lacked experience, they had no idea what kind of competition they would be facing.

“We're at about the same level,” Viola explained of the competition, and said her team did a good job of learning the game. “Once you throw your first rock, it gets easier to judge when you are throwing. After the first game, the girls have gotten really good, and they are taking my tips and advice and work on it.”

The CDDHS team looked excellent on the ice. However, thAey lost their first two games, which eliminated them from moving on to the next day of competition.

Elmira Distrect Secondary School won the CWOSSA girls curling championship with a 10-6 win over John Diefenbaker Secondary school in the final match.