CANORA - Local teams continue to dominate in bonspiels played at the Sylvia Fedoruk Centre, with Canora rinks finishing first in all three events at the Canora Men’s Bonspiel, held from March 2 to 5. With a field that expanded from 11 teams in 2022 to 16 teams this year, two draws of eight-end games were held on each of the four bonspiel days.
The Canora rink skipped by Terry Wilson were the big winners, taking top spot in the A event. Joining Wilson were: Curtis Baillie (third), Kyle Roberts (second) and Dawson Zuravloff (lead).
Top spot in the second event went to the Bob Kolodziejski foursome of Canora, including: Kolodziejski (skip), Kody Rock (third), Robin Ludba (second) and Casey Mydonick (lead).
The third event was won by the John Zbitniff team of: Zbitniff (skip), Mark McTavish (third), Jordy Zbitniff (second) and Kelly McTavish (lead).
The A Event final was a clash between two rinks that came through their first three games of the bonspiel with perfect records, Wilson and the Rylan Palchewich rink, also of Canora.
This was a game that could have been decided in the first end. Without last rock and facing the unpleasant prospect of starting the game by giving up three or even more, Wilson hit and rolled behind cover. The Palchewich team was unable to remove it, resulting in a steal of one for Wilson.
Palchewich and his teammates quickly responded by scoring two in the second end, but then the two teams traded singles in the next three ends, resulting in a 3-3 tie after five. From that point on the tide seemed to change, as Wilson and his teammates stole the last four points of the game, and the A event championship.
The B event final pitted the Jesse Olson rink of Preeceville against Kolodziejski. The game was close through five ends. Kolodziejski cracked open a big three points in the sixth end to take the lead, and the outcome was never really in doubt after that point.
In the C event final, Zbitniff was challenged by the Terry Dennis foursome. Zbitniff scored a pair in the first end, but Dennis tied the score in the second. Dennis added a steal of one in the third, but the Zbitniff rink came back with the biggest end of the game, a score of three in the fourth. Dennis manage to get one of those points back in the fifth, but Zbitniff increased the lead with a pair in the sixth to go up 7-4, which seemed like it might be too much to overcome with ends rapidly running out.
But the Dennis foursome kept coming, and scored a pair in the seventh to make it very interesting coming home. Zbitniff and his mates would not be denied, however, and ran the Dennis team out of rocks in the final end to clinch the victory
Other rinks that competed in the bonspiel included: Al Palagian, Don Probe, Peter Wiwchar, Zeno Gulka, Aaron Herriges, Lenny Bazarski and Craig Ostafie, all of Canora; Sheldon Luciw of Preeceville, Cayne Worobetz of Yorkton, and Jody Bashforth, with team members from Danbury and Hyas.
The next bonspiel action at the Sylvia Fedoruk Centre is the first annual Canora Youth Bonspiel on March 17-18 for curlers aged 15 and under. To close out the curling season, the year-end Mixed Bonspiel is coming up on March 23-25.
