 WOLFVILLE, N.S. — Team Jordon McDonald (Winnipeg) punched its ticket through to the 2025 Montana’s Canadian Curling Trials, presented by Connect Hearing, with an 8-5 win over Team Braden Calvert (Winnipeg) in Game 3 of a best-of-three men’s final of the 2025 Home Hardware Canadian Curling Pre-Trials at the Andrew H. McCain Arena Sunday morning. The Assiniboine Memorial Curling Club squadron, rounded out by vice-skip Jacques Gauthier, second Elias Huminicki, lead Cameron Olafson, and coach Bryan Miki, will now be in the eight-team field amongst Canada’s best men’s teams, set for Nov. 22-30, 2025, at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax. “It’s unbelievable,” said McDonald. “I feel like this team really deserved that win. We worked really hard. We didn’t have quite the start of the season that we wanted, but we stayed patient and did a really good prep for this event. It finally clicked.” At 22 years old, McDonald is the youngest skip in Canadian history to qualify for the Montana’s Trials. Team McDonald is also part of Curling Canada’s National U-25 NextGen Program, and McDonald himself is a For the Love of Curling Scholarship recipient in 2021. “That kind of gets me a bit emotional,” said McDonald of his feat. “That’s really cool. I’m going to go in there knowing that and try to show the U-25 of Canadian curling what’s possible in this game. That’s an absolute honour for me.” McDonald’s says he feels that all the off-season training and preparation is now starting to pay dividends: “Last year was a big stepping-stone year for us. We almost got into the trials directly. We were really close, so we wanted to come in strong for the pre-trials and really get our spot,” McDonald said. “It helped a lot, and we’ve worked really hard over the last couple of months. This was a big season for us, and we wanted to continue what we had started last year.” Sensing the scope of the prize awaiting the winner, both teams came out swinging in the first; including a highlight-reel run-triple from vice-skip Gauthier, which flipped the momentum of an otherwise Team Calvert-dominated end, leading to a Team McDonald deuce. Team Calvert rebounded in kind with a deuce of its own in two, but was followed by an unforced error in the third on Calvert’s final stone, which ran heavy on a chase attempt of a buried stone and allowed McDonald to claim a two-score. “The second end, we didn’t have a great set-up there,” said McDonald. “We we’re okay giving up the two there but we got a big miss out of [Calvert] there in three, where he chapped off. That second deuce was huge.” Team Calvert then blanked and was forced, seeing Team McDonald carry a 4-3 lead into the break. “Once you get that force after a deuce, just get one up with, that’s just a great spot to be in,” said McDonald. It wasn’t until the seventh end that some real separation between the two teams began to show, both on the scoreboard and in rock positioning. Team McDonald’s edge in execution cooked up a two with intricate shot-making that harried the four-foot. Calvert cut down the scoring area to a sliver with a freeze, but McDonald was still able to plant his last-stone draw closer to the pin for two. “At this event, we played so good with hammer,” said McDonald. “It felt like we had a chance for a deuce every time we had hammer. So that was really helpful.” Calvert and co. fought back valiantly in the eighth with a two-score, but failed to close the gap in the game. Jordon McDonald made a through-a-port hit for two in the ninth. Team Calvert did not go quietly, however, forcing McDonald to make a soft double in the tenth to run Team Calvert out of rocks and cementing the 8-5 score. “I really wanted to win this event,” said McDonald. “It just feels like this is such a big win early in my career, and I hope that I can build off this win and continue to do some good things in this sport.” Game 3 of the women’s best-of-three final is set for today at 4 p.m., between Team Kayla MacMillan (Victoria) and Team Selena Sturmay (Edmonton). The winner will move on to the 2025 Montana’s Trials. Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2025 Home Hardware Canadian Curling Pre-Trials are available by CLICKING HERE. TSN and RDS will provide coverage of the 2025 Home Hardware Canadian Pre-Trials best-of-three finals starting Friday night. CLICK HERE for the complete schedule. For ticket information for the 2025 Home Hardware Canadian Curling Pre-Trials, go to www.curling.ca/2025pretrials/tickets/. |
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Team Rachel Homan (Photo: Anil Mungal/GSOC) continue to dominate the women's GSOC Tour.
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