Two teams from Stirling travelled to Stranraer to compete in the National Gateway Challenge and one returned with the trophy! From left to right, the team are, Liam Morton (Lead), Jack Brickell (2nd), Mark Dainter (3rd), Derek Wallace (Skip).
The following is a report from Mark Dainter:
Over the course of two days, twelve teams from Stirling, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fife, Kinross, Dundee, Forfar, and Inverness played in three pools of four on the Saturday, with the winners and runners up going through to the knockout stages on the Sunday.
Both Stirling teams played extremely well on Saturday, although sadly drawn in the same pool but both reached the knockout stage.
Team Wallace (Stirling 1) won every game in their pool after a tight 6-3 win over Team Moray (Stirling 2) in their first game, Team Moray taking exactly the same number of stones from Team Wallace as every other team in the competition put together. After that, wins over Kinross and Edinburgh1, put Team Wallace into the High Road Knockout stages, with a Semi Final game against close rivals Glasgow Gateway.
Notably Team Moray finished second in their pool but sadly due to the organisers choice of a draw competition at the end of day one, ended up in the Low Road. Kinross, who only won one game in the same pool, survived an early exit from the competition because of their draw shot result.
Team Moray, Joanne Norris, Shuki Rose, Claire Fotheringham and Emma Dolmaire unfortunately lost to Kinross in the Low Road Semi Final, in a tight 4-3 game, having beaten them the day before 7-1. Then went on to beat Fife A 9-4 in the third and fourth place play, while Kinross went on to win the Low Road. The other High Road Semi final was played between Edinburgh2 and Forfar with Edinburgh Progressing to the final to play Stirling’s Team Wallace after an extra end.
The final completed a clean sweep for Team Wallace with a 6-1 win over the Edinburgh team. Team Wallace won every game they played and only gave up 4 ends in 5 games over the entire weekend. With Team Moray only beaten by Team Wallace and Kinross they also scored well in every game.
The whole event showed that Stirling is way ahead of other rinks around Scotland. The coaching at the Peak is by far the best in Scotland, so hats off to them for teaching us so well and thank you SCG for your support.
We hope you are as proud as we are.