Both the Wilfrid Laurier University men’s and women’s curling teams were on top of the podium on Monday, winning the gold medal at the Ontario University Athletics curling championships.
Fourth-year skip Carly Howard led the women’s curling team to a 5-3 victory over the Brock Badgers in the final, winning their fourth gold medal in a five-year span, while fourth-year skip Aaron Squires from the men’s curling team held on to the hammer coming into the final end to win the gold medal for the first time since the 2008 season.
“It feels really good,” Howard said, immediately following the championship final. “I was really happy that we made it to the top three, that was really important for us to make sure that everyone knew that we needed to be at CIS.”
“It’s a great feeling,” Squires said after capturing the gold medal. “It was unfortunate last year with what happened, when I didn’t have a chance to play in the final, but the boys were able to win [silver], and they were upset when we didn’t win [gold] but to come out on top was a great feeling for everybody.”
Both teams were able to run their opponents out of rocks coming into the final ends with the hammer, and held onto the lead to win the OUA final. According to Howard and Squires, even though they had an automatic bye into the Canadian Interuniversity Sport national championships this year, both rinks wanted to earn their spots and show they deserve to be there.
Both teams will be competing at the CIS championships, held at Laurier. It will start on March 18 and run until March 21.