Team Tardi will get the chance to defend their Canadian Junior Men’s Curling title when they head to Quebec next month for the national championship.
The Langley/Royal City team secured their trip to nationals after beating Team Ballard 3-1 in Saturday’s 2018 Boston Pizza BC Junior Men’s Curling Championship final in Langley.
Team Tardi were looking to improve on their record in this competition against Team Ballard, which was the only team to beat Team Tardi in round-robin play ahead of the final. Team Ballard were the third-place team after round robin play and were looking for their first BC championship.
Skip Tyler Tardi, third Sterling Middleton, second Jordan Tardi and coach Paul Tardi were on last year’s team that travelled to the nationals, but this will be the first trip to nationals for lead Zachary Curtis. The Tardis live in Cloverdale, while Middleton lives in New Westminster and Curtis lives in Burnaby.
Team Ballard, representing Coquitlam and Royal City, features skip Dawson Ballard (Cloverdale), third Hayato Sato (New Westminster), second Joshua Miki (Port Coquitlam) and lead Troy Chong (Burnaby). They are coached by world champion curler Bryan Miki.
Speaking after the final, Tyler Tardi said he knew it was going to be a tough game. “It was pretty stressful. I have a lot of respect for Team Ballard, they’ve been working hard for as long as I can remember. They’re good throwers, they have a good sense of strategy. Bryan (Miki) has been doing a really good job with the team. I expect them to do really well at U18s.”
Tardi is looking forward to Canadians, and hopefully, another trip to worlds. “It’s always fun to just go there. There’s a lot of friends that go to that event and it’s great to see them. I’m excited to hopefully defend the national title first and then do better at worlds.”
The 2018 New Holland Canadian Junior Men’s and Women’s Curling Championships run from Jan. 13-21 in Quebec. That event will be staged at the Centre municipal de curling de Shawinigan and the Aréna Grand-Mère.
The championship saw eight U21 junior men’s teams and eight U21 junior women’s teams play against each other in an eight-team round robin.
Team Reese-Hansen from Victoria had earlier won the 2018 Boston Pizza BC Junior Women’s competition.
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