WCUR | Voyageurs Get Off To a Hot Start at OUA Championships

The Laurentian Voyageurs women's curling team began their OUA championship weekend with two draws on day one of the tournament. With Lauentian hosting the event this year the Vees were looking to get off to a strong start with matchups against the Queen's Gaels and Ontario Tech Ridgebacks.

In their first draw of the weekend the Voyageurs took on Kingston's, Queen's Gaels a strong opponent and no easy task for Laurentian to open the event. After starting off with the hammer Queen's managed to take a single solitary point in the first end. From there Laurentian took 2 in the second end before managing a fantastic three point steal in the third end to blow open a 5-1 lead early on. 

From there both teams would exchange two point ends with the hammer in the 4th and 5th ends bringing the game to 7-3 before Queen's would once again pick up two points with the hammer before coming away with a steal in the 7th to cut the lead down to 7-6. Fortunately for Laurentian with them having the hammer and a one point lead going into the final end the game was called giving Laurentian their first win of the championship at the earliest opportunity and gaining some much needed momentum going into draw 2 of the day. 

In draw 2 Laurentian was matched up against the Ontario Tech Ridgebacks who were coming off the back of a win in their first match of the day as well, putting a lot on the line for both teams in this contest with both looking to get off to a perfect start on day 1. It was Laurentian though who set the tone early on  as the team would pull off a three point steal in the very first end to take an vitally important early lead. 

The team would not look back from there as Laurentian continued to pile it on , adding another two points in end three before pulling off another steal in end four bringing the game 6-1 after four ends. Both sides would then exchange points in ends five and six before the game was officially called with a 7-2 final score giving the Vees a perfect 2-0 start to the OUA's.

The team will have another two matches Saturday afternoon when they play the Laurier Golden Hawks at 12:30pm before rounding out the round robin play at 7:30pm against the Algoma Thunderbirds. From there the top 8 teams move on to championships Sunday and a shot at progressing to the U SPORTS Championships later on this year.

- Andrew Lemieux