The Provincial Scotties Tournament of Hearts is returning to Beausejour.

CurlManitoba announced Friday, before the start of the late draw of the 2015 championship at the Winkler Arena, that the 2016 Scotties will be held at the Sun-Gro Centre from January 20th-24th.

Co-chairs Gary Plohman and Lance Wadelius are thrilled that their community will again showcase Manitoba's finest curlers.

“The excitement is just starting to build,” said Wadelius. “Of course it's a year away but I can tell you right now, that our volunteers are starting to get into place. We have actually just completed our sub-committee co-chairs - most of them - and a lot of them are coming back from the 2011 Safeway and they are very eager to get involved again.”

Beausejour's first Provincial Scotties Tournament of Hearts was held in 2004 and was won by Lois Fowler, Gerri Cooke, Maureen Bonar & Lana Hunter of the Wheat City Curling Club in Brandon.

The town of 3,000 also hosted the Safeway Championship in 2011 and that was won by Jeff Stoughton, Jon Mead, Reid Carruthers and Steve Gould.

Both championships were hugely successful and now Wadelius says it's time to do it again.

“We've got such a great base of volunteers and fan support for this game particularly for these lady curlers so we're excited to showcase this again,”

The Winkler host committee under the leadership of co-chairs Louis Tanguay and John Neufeld have set the bar really high.

How high?

“It's high,” said Wadelius. “Louis and John have done such a fantastic job. We can only hope that we can try to match or come close to what they've done. They have shared a lot of information with us and so we're going to do our very best.”

“We've already had our first meeting with the host committee as a whole,” added Wadelius. “We still have just a couple of positions that we need to fill and our sponsorship committee is getting ready to move very shortly.”

One year seems like a long time, but just as the Winkler host committee found out when they were awarded the 2015 games last January in Virden – 12 months goes by pretty quick.

The 2016 Scotties will be here before the Beausejour host committee knows what hit them.

“We're so excited,” Wadelius said. “We're a year away and already we just want to get involved, so it's going to be a long year. But you know what - we'll have a lot of time to prepare.”







Saturday, January 24th
Draw #13   8:30 a.m.
Kaileigh Strath, Winkler 8 Joelle Brown, Assiniboine Memorial 5
Kerri Einarson, East St. Paul 5 Kristy McDonald, Granite 4
Jill Thurston, Granite 4 Janet Harvey, Assiniboine Memorial 3
Tina Kozak, Neepawa 9 Tiffany McLean, Dauphin 6

Draw #14   12:15 p.m.
Jennifer Jones, St. Vital 9 Michelle Montford, Assiniboine Memorial 3
Barb Spencer, Assiniboine Memorial 11 Darcy Robertson, Fort Rouge 3
Colleen Kilgallen, Roland 8 Stacey Fordyce, Brandon 3
Terry Ursel, Lansdowne 9 Kelly Wiwcharuk, Snow Lake 2

Extreme Force Group Tie Breaker  4 p.m.
McDonald 10 Brown 1

1-1 Page Playoff Game   6 p.m.
Jones 9 Einarson 6

2-2 Page Playoff Game  8:30 p.m.
Spencer 8 McDonald 7 (ee)


Asham Group Standings
Jones 7-0
Spencer 6-1
Montford & Robertson 4-3
Kilgallen & Ursel 3-4
Fordyce 1-6
Wiwcharuk 0-7

Extreme Force Group Standings
Einarson 7-0
McDonald & Brown 5-2
Strath & Thurston 4-3
Kozak 2-5
Harvey 1-6
McLean 0-7


gallery by Dantin Reimer

Gary Plohman & Lance Wadelius photo by Resby Coutts