麻豆社区

Thomas Scoffin said in all likelihood he'll take another run at the Alberta junior curling championships next year to get another shot at the national title.

But it won't be easy, the 18-year-old Yukoner said in an interview Wednesday from Edmonton after finishing second at the M & M Meat Shop Junior Championship hosted by Fort McMurray.

The first-year university student enrolled in sport and recreation at the University of Alberta said Alberta is a curling province, and because of that, it's one of the hardest to reach a national championship from.

Scoffin's rink first had to advance out of their region, and then play the winners of the other seven other regions at the provincial championships to earn a berth at the last week's nationals in Fort McMurray.

Who knows whether success will be on their side next year but Scoffin said more than likely he'll try to scratch his way through to another trip to the junior championship.

Losing in the final Saturday was heartbreaking, and hard to get over, he acknowledged.

"We had so much invested by our team in that game,鈥� he said. "We came up short and it is never easy to get over that loss. But there's always a winner and a loser. We'll take some time to learn from that game and hopefully move forward from there.鈥�

Scoffin's rink lost to Manitoba on the final rock in the 10th end when Winnipeg skip Matt Dunstone bounced off one of his own, and took out Scoffin's shot rock to win the championship 4-3.

Scoffin took the lead 1-0 in the second end, but Dunstone went up 2-1 with two in the fifth and stretched the margin with another single in the sixth to go up 3-1. Scoffin rebounded with one in the eighth and another in the ninth to put the game at 3-3 heading into the 10th end.

The thought of winning the championship and going onto play in next month's world championships at the venue for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia really was not a distraction, he said.

At the national championship level, said Scoffin, pressure automatically comes with expectations, and it was the same for both teams

"I mean it was anyone's game,鈥� he said. "We are both good teams, and we played them before and beat them.鈥�

Scoffin said nothing stands out in the final as something he wish he could have done or taken back, because at that level, one missed shot does not win or lose a game.

"Obviously you would like to have the hammer in the 10th end but it did not work out that way,鈥� he said. "We were thankful and fortunate to represent Alberta this year.

"That was our goal. We had a really strong team put together, and we thought we could go all the way, and we almost made it.鈥�

Scoffin, who represented Canada and the Yukon as skip at the Junior Olympics in Austria last year said it was after all "pretty cool to represent the Yukon in some way鈥� during last week's championship.