Adam Prudhomme
Editor
Both NDSS’ girls and boys curling teams are headed to EOSSAA after a gold and silver finish at KASSAA respectively.
NDSS’ girls bested Frontenac 9-3 in the KASSAA finals on Friday at the Napanee District Curling Club, capturing the school’s first female curling title since 2016.
This could just be the start for this particular group of girls, as the entire rink would qualify as ‘juniors’. They are skipped by Reese Hutcheson with Katie Buchan as lead, Julia MacDermaid at second and Hailey Bruce as vice.
“We had two young ladies come up through the junior ranks this year to Grade 9 and then had another Grade 9 girl join them and I think she did some curling with elementary, and then we had a Grade 10 that was completely new and wanted to try it and it came together pretty good,” said Hawks head coach Mark Dunham.
NDSS’ boys team had a shot at making it a double gold finish for Napanee, heading into the finals as the top seed, meaning they had a double life, while their opponent had just one.
NDSS’ Logan Harris delivers the rock with Adam Chadwick on the left and Ethan Stein on the right during Friday’s KASSAA championships. Photo by Adam Prudhomme.
The Hawks were right in both games until late, when a couple of big ends put the game out of reach. Napanee would wind up losing both matches by the identical score of 9-4.
“They were competitive, although maybe the score doesn’t say that,” said Dunham. “They were only down one and down two in both games and gave up big ends in both games in the second to last end to the point where we were two far behind to try and score that many, even with the hammer in the last end. They played extremely well.”
The boys are skipped by Jackson Colazio with Logan Harris as lead, Adam Chadwick as second and Ethan Stein as vice. Despite the loss, their second place finish qualifies them for EOSSAA.
NDSS had won two-straight KASSAA titles in the boys division heading into this season.
This year’s KASSAA event was originally meant to be a two-day event but would up being spread out over a week. The tournament kicked off on Feb. 9 and was scheduled to conclude the next day, but was pushed back until Feb. 17 due to the weather.
Both NDSS teams will now get set to compete at EOSSAA, which goes March 6-7 at the Kingston Royal Curling Club. This will mark the first time NDSS will play a team outside of the Kingston region in three years due to the pandemic. The top teams from each division will qualify for OFSAA, which are scheduled for March 21-24 in North Bay.