Local Curling team dominated at the Alberta Winter Games

A curling team from Okotoks has brought home some special hardware from the Alberta Winter Games.

Team Bachek competed in the U15 Division at the Winter Games and won the gold medal.

"It started out with round robin games. It was four teams in a pool, and so we had three round robin games. So, we went 3-0 in that," explains the Team Bachek coach, Coach Don Bachek. "We barely squeaked out some wins in those games, but we managed to make that happen. After that, there was a semi-final game. So, a cross over game with the other pool of four." 

They easily won that game, which advanced them to the gold medal match.

While they did win that game, it did take them an extra end to give them the top spot on the podium.

Coach Bachek said that after they won the first three round robin games, he knew that they had a chance to win gold.

"It was good to see that they got rewarded for their hard work, because they practiced a lot and it's really nice for them to have something like that, a gold medal," Bachek says.

Even though they have won gold at the Winter Games, this particular group hasn't played together for that long.

"The boys played on different teams, not all together. Two had played on a team together for a little bit," says Bachek. "This is a brand-new team for the four of them all together. So, we kind of arranged that in summertime. This is the first year that they've been playing together as a team."

Coach Bachek says that the team's Skip, Kesler Bachek, has played competitive curling for some time, while the other three have played non-competitive curling.

While they currently aren't playing as part of a league, they are still taking part in tournaments across the province.

"Right now, we are on, what we call the Alberta Curling tour. So, it is for U15 Curlers," Bachek says. "We are just on this tour, so we would travel on weekends to different places that would have these tournaments. We've probably done around 6 tournaments or so far this year. I think the Winter games are probably about our 7th, roughly."

This past weekend they competed in Provincials in Lacombe this past weekend, where they took home the top spot in their division.

There were five levels of championships at the Provincials, with Level A competing for the provincial banner and gold medal.

After 2 wins and 2 losses in their initial pool, they ended up in the C level.