Sherry to U-18 Worlds in March

Taken from Nugget.ca on Monday December 7th, 2015 (click here to view).

Kate Sherry, of North Bay, and her team from Sudbury (Team Brunton) won the battle of Ontario for the chance to represent the province at the Under 18 World Curling Championships in Edmonton in 2016.

They beat the defending world champs of Team MacMillan from Ottawa in a best of three this weekend.

Favoured to win, in game one, Team MacMillan defeated Team Brunton 9-2. In game two, Team Brunton stole points in 4 ends to defeat the Ottawa team 6-1.

In the deciding game, Team Brunton was down 4-2 after 5. They stole 1 point in the sixth end, blanked the seventh and stole 2 in the last end to win 5-4. Many great shots were played in the last end. The game was decided on the last rock, when skip Macmillan failed to hit and stay in the rings.

The teams curled over 7 hours Saturday. It was a long day,starting early and ending before midnight.

Team Brunton will now head to Edmonton in March 2016 to play in the Under 18 World Championship. This is an international event. 12 women’s and 12 men’s teams from the USA, Japan, Europe and Canada will participate. This is the highest level a bantam curler can get to.

Sherry is also curling on a junior team and heading off to the Ontario Junior Provincials taking place in Sioux Lookout in early January. They qualified two weeks ago by going undefeated a regional’s, going 5-0. They hope to win that and head off to Junior Nationals in Stratford.

She also plays on another bantam team that will play at regional’s and hope to qualify for the Northern Ontario Bantam Championships for 2016.

Kate and her teammates are part of the Ontario Curling Councils “Next Generation Program”, grooming athletes that have “Podium Potential”. They get specialized training from nutritionists, dietitian’s, sports psychologists and mentor coaching. Sherry’s team have Tom Coulterman as their mentor coach. He was the coach for Team Jacobs, who won the Olympics a couple of years ago.

Team Brunton (yellow) stole two points in the final end of the third game of a best two-out-of-three contest to advance to the Under 18 World Championship.