On Friday, February 10, the Merritt Curling Club brought back their annual ‘Mixed Spiel’. The tournament came back after a two year break due to COVID-19 restrictions. 

The Merritt Curling Club regularly hosts a men’s, ladies’, and mixed bonspiel during their season, with one-off tournaments like the turkey spiel also taking place. With the return of the mixed event, the club finally has their complete event offerings. 

“The event turned out very well,” said Merritt Curling Club President Susan Newton. “We call it ‘Mixed Spiel’ because we also mix up the ratio of genders in a team. You can have one male and three females or three males and one female, as long as there are both types of players in your team, you can have any combination you want.”  

Eight teams attended the spiel, with one even coming from Clinton, B.C. Unfortunately, the turnout was a little less than the usual number of teams in past spiels.

“In our last Mixed Spiel we had 11 teams, but I know around this time of year it’s really hard to get curlers out because a number of them are out of town because of the colder months.”

2023 Mixed Spiel. Izaiah Reyes/Herald

Even though there were less teams than there were in past events, Newton mentioned how pleasing it was to see players who are fairly new to curling, compete at the spiel. 

“We had some fairly new curlers out there,” she said. “Some of the girls have only been playing for about two years, so it’s really nice to see the younger generation do the best they can out there, and they competed very well.” 

Newton mentioned that the teams performed at a very high level, having some games go down to the wire. 

“There weren’t any runaway games, where it was just one sided,” she said. “I was impressed by how close the games were.” 

The event had three winners with the tournament being set up to have A, B, and C categories.

“The tournament format has the matchups branching off,” she explained. “If you lose the first game you drop down to the Bs, and if you lost there then you can try to win the Cs.” 

The following are the results from the Mixed Spiel: 

Winner ‘A’ event 

  • Vern Latremouille 
  • Lorna Latremouille 
  • Rene Thomsen 
  • Leslie Thomsen 

Winner ’B’ event

  • Dennis Couture 
  • Monika Tenisch
  • Doug Stone 
  • Wendy Stone 

Winner ‘C’ event 

  • Rich Culbertson 
  • Gerry Gilderdale 
  • Lis Ladyman 
  • Susan Newton

With the conclusion of the Mixed Spiel, members are now looking forward to finishing the season off with their club championship events. The doubles championships will happen on March 14 while the men’s and ladies’ club championships will be on March 17.