36th Bronze Broom Bonspiel
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Sixteen teams, including three local club teams, were curling in the 36th Annual Ladies Bronze Broom Bonspiel held Monday and Tuesday, Feb. 25-26, at the Tillsonburg Curling Club.
The club was decorated in a welcoming Winter Wonderland theme, and thankfully Mother Nature didn’t add her own winter decorations until the bonspiel was over so at least the out of town teams had safe travels!
After the first day of play, the team of Wendy Young, Shirley Ireland, Helen Cull and Isabelle Brown were still in the Stauffer Motors ‘A’ Event having won their first two games. The two other local teams, Team Harris and Team Peter, had split their two games with a loss and a win and putting them into the Tim Hortons ‘B’ Event.
Monday evening the curlers were treated to dinner catered by Chrissy’s and served by the men of the club and some ‘sisterly’ entertainment. The teams had been asked to ‘dress’ in a black-and-white theme and many complied using creativity that brought nuns, penguins, snowflakes, Team Canada and some fancy jackets to the banquet. The funky penguins from Glanford took the prize for dressing in theme.
The Tuesday morning games saw all the Tburg teams come out with wins – Wendy defeating the Wendy Bowen team from Ingersoll to move on to the A Final; the Gail Harris team defeated Simcoe’s Dianne Jamieson rink and the Nora Peter team beat the Pauline Taylor rink from Glanford to move on to face each other in the B Event final.
Wendy Young and her team faced Cathy Keys, last year’s A event winners, in their final game. Keys was on the board first, but Wendy answered and was able to stay close for a few ends, but were down three coming home. The Keys team ran them out of rocks to repeat as Bronze Broom champions.
In the ‘A’ Consolation game the Wendy Bowen team from Ingersoll defeated Jeanette Pesall and her team from Aylmer.
In the all Tillsonburg B event final Nora Peter and her team of Diana May, Ruth McSpadden and Sandy Buchner were out-curled by Gail Harris’ team of Jean Donck, Diane Burgess and Ann Sangster. Gail took one in each of the first three ends with Peter finally hitting the scoreboard in the 4th end, but Gail answered with four in the fifth. The struggle continued for the Peter rink in the 6th end and the teams shook hands leaving the Harris team with the deserved trophy win.
In the B consolation game the Dianne Jamieson rink from Simcoe, skipped by Kathy Steen, stole the win from Glanford’s Pauline Taylor team.
The C and D event finals saw all out of town teams vying for the trophies. In the Howard Johnson ‘C’ event final Wendy Simpson from the Kitchener/Waterloo Granite Club faced Dallyce Southern of Ilderton in a tight game that came down to an extra end to decide the winner. Even with last rock advantage the Simpson team was unable to score the win and the Ilderton team finished as the trophy winners.
In the consolation of ‘C’ event the all Ingersoll game saw the Lois Lindsay team defeat Pat Skinner’s team.
In the Canadian Tire ‘D’ Event final Dianne Bocking of St. Thomas was on the scoreboard first with one point, but Christa Brouwer of Aylmer answered with four in the second and stole her way to the 6th end where St. Thomas took another single and then conceded the match to the Aylmer team.
The consolation game of the ‘D’ event was won by Gen Kennedy of Sarnia who jumped out to an early lead over Donna Black of Ingersoll and never relinquished it.
Sponsors were on hand to award trophies and prizes to the winners. Special thanks and appreciation go out to John Hartnell and Stauffer Motors for the sponsorship of the ‘A’ Trophy; Randy Salverda of Tim Hortons for the ‘B’ Trophy sponsorship; Mark Covey and Howard Johnson for sponsoring the ‘C’ event trophy and Brett Lavier of Canadian Tire for his sponsorship of the ‘D’ event trophy and prizes.
The spiel received additional sponsorship from Harvest Retirement Community, and donations from Metro, Amarula Cream, Shoppers Drug Mart, Sobeys and Tillsonburg Garden Gate.
Finally thanks go out to all the club members who volunteered their time, donated to the draw table, baked goodies and did kitchen duty. Special thanks to Marion and Bill Pratt, scorekeeper Nancy Warren, Brenda Peters and committee members Betty Tull, Linda Newman, Yonna DiLella, and Dorell Clark for putting together a great two days of curling and fun.