WATERLOO, Ontario - The Queen’s Gaels and Carleton Ravens were crowned the 2019 OUA Women’s and Men’s Curling Champions respectively on Monday afternoon as the five-day championships came to a close at the KW Granite Club.
In an exciting final day which saw both gold medal games come down to the final end, the Gaels brought the OUA banner back to Queen’s University for the first time since 1994 while the Ravens captured the first OUA title in program history.
“We’re really excited to be able to bring the banner home for Queen’s,” said Gaels skip Mary Fay following the victory. “It’s really nice to go to a school and you’re really proud to be a part of something so to be able to bring that home for them is really exciting.”
“It’s awesome,” added Carleton skip Cameron Goodkey on his team’s victory. “It’s a great group of guys and coach. We had a great year. We only started playing together just over a month ago now. We were able to do it and it feels really good.”
The men’s final between Carleton and Brock featured some incredible shot making throughout the contest as the two teams played at an extremely high level. The Badgers took control of the match early as they scored a pair in both the second and fourth ends while limiting the Ravens to just singles in the first and third ends to lead 4-2 at the fourth end break.
However, the game turned in the favour of the Ravens in the fifth end as Goodkey made a draw for three to swing the momentum in Carleton’s favour.
“That was huge,” said Goodkey of the big fifth end. “All week we’ve been a little slow to start. We’ve had great comebacks and it happened again. It was great.”
A steal in the sixth end by the Ravens gave them complete control and leading 6-5 heading to the final end, Carleton filled the four-foot with red rocks which the Badgers were unable to fully remove, ultimately leading to a score of one and the championship.
Meanwhile, in the women’s game, like they had done for the majority of the week, the Gaels were ruthless in their efficiency. Controlling the game with wide-open play, Fay and Queen’s scored two in the second and fourth ends to lead 4-1 at the fourth-end break.
Laurentian managed to pull themselves back into the contest with singles in both the fifth and sixth ends but Queen’s responded with two more in the seventh to give them a three-point cushion coming home.
The Voyageurs, who came from three points down in the final end in their quarter-final matchup with Toronto, looked poised to do so again in the eighth but got an unfortunate pick on skip Kira Brunton’s first stone. From there, the Gaels ran Laurentian out of rocks to secure the 6-4 victory.
“It was definitely unfortunate that Laurentian had the pick,” said Fay of the events of the final end. “You never want to see that happen. It’s always nice to end on a high note. You want to see a team make a shot for the win. They were right there.”
The bronze medal games on Monday were both comfortable 7-2 wins for the victors as the Brock Badgers knocked off the Lakehead Thunderwolves in the women’s bronze medal match while the Western Mustangs defeated the Ryerson Rams in the men’s bronze medal match.
All three medalists on both the men’s and women’s sides will now move on to the U SPORTS/Curling Canada Championships next month in Fredericton, N.B., hosted by the UNB Varsity Reds.
