By June Norvila
As usual there was no shortage of teams for the annual Bentley Seniors Bonspiel. A full complement of 32 teams competed January 18-22 in the modified four-event spiel.
Free eats, coffee, and candy every day; curling only one game per day; no evening draws and cash prizes paid per win seems to be a format many seniors like.
The "A" Event final went down to the last rock with Bill Gibson of Red Deer and team members Merla Gibson, Murray Yarish, and Marvin Bruce the eventual winner over Cliff Carson of Lacombe. That made Lyle Lorenz third and Laurel Goodacre fourth.
Winning the "B" Event was John Stol from Lacombe with team members Sharyn Pahl, Nancy Graves, and Ed Langmuir over the Al Jones team from Winfield. Third was Al Elliot and fourth was Jim Morris.
"C" Event winners were the Ken Brown team from the Lacombe Club and the Ray Watt team from Red Deer.
"D" Event winners were the teams of Bob Nelson, Gary Longacre, Ken Cookson, and Bob Pahl.
A catered buffet-style banquet was held on the Thursday night at the Blindman Valley Ag Centre with draws and door prizes. Master of ceremonies for the evening was Paul Norvila.
The winner of the major meat with freezer draw was Marvin Zwarich from Edmonton.
There was very good support again in the way of donations, both cash and otherwise, from many individuals and businesses from the area and the organizing committee and volunteers did a marvelous job of organizing the event.
The bonspiel is so well liked that it is already half filled with entrants for next year.
Bentley junior third in Alberta
Nineteen-year-old Jennifer Liner from Bentley was amongst those junior women curlers trying to represent Alberta at the 2010 Canadian Junior Ladies Curling Championships this year.
She is playing second on a team skipped by 20-year-old Kendra Nakagama out of the Lethbridge Curling Club with other team members 20-year-old third Jessie Nelson and nineteen-year-old lead Jinaye Ayrey, under coach Lila Deering.
The Nakagama team did well at the Southern Junior Playdowns hosted at the Red Deer Curling Club from Dec. 4-6, 2009. They lost their first two games but went on to win the "C" Event to qualify to go on to the Junior Provincial Championships in Grande Prairie Dec. 27-31, 2009.
There the team easily won their first game, won a close second game, had an easy third game win, and very easily won their fourth game.
The fifth game was tough. They lost it in an extra end, and then lost their sixth game to the team that ended up being the second place qualifier.
The Nakagama team ended round robin play with a fairly easy win in the 7th draw to end up with a 5-win, 2-loss record to end up in third place overall.
That put them into the semi-final playoff, which they lost against the second ranked Jessie Scheidegger team, also from the Lethbridge Club.
In the final Scheidegger lost to the Nadine Chyz team, also from the South, so the Chyz team represented Alberta at the 2010 Canadian Championships in Sorel-Tracy, Que. from Jan. 16-24. Alberta finished in the top half of the pack.