A Langley/New Westminster squad captured bronze at the 2016 Canadian junior men’s curling championships in Stratford, Ontario.
The B.C. squad skipped by Tyler Tardi fell 8-3 to Matt Dunstone’s Manitoba team in Saturday night’s semifinal at the Stratford Rotary Complex.
Tardi’s team — third Daniel Wenzek, second Jordan Tardi (Tyler’s brother), lead Nick Meister and coach Paul Tardi (Tyler and Jordan’s dad) — goes home with bronze. Tardi will join Nova Scotia’s Mary Fay and Karlee Burgess, along with fellow B.C. curler Sterling Middleton, on Team Canada at the Youth Winter Olympics next month in Lillehammer, Norway.
“It’s been 10 years of something like that since B.C. got on the podium in men’s [Tyrel Griffiths won silver in 2006],” said Tardi, 17. “So I’ve got no sad thoughts; I’m pretty proud of the boys. They played great all week. Matt can make some pretty great shots; it’s hard to stop a team like that, but you have to have respect for that.”
On Sunday, Dunstone and his team from Winnipeg claimed Manitoba’s fourth consecutive men’s gold medal at the national event, beating Northern Ontario’s Tanner Horgan (Copper Cliff) 11-4 in the final.
– story by Al Cameron, Curling Canada