The 2025 SDSSAA Girls Curling final between the Marymount Regals and Collège Notre-Dame Alouettes set the tone. Chalking up an 8-5 win over the up and coming CND squad allowed skip Kameron Tellier and the Marymount Regals to etch out a third consecutive city crown.
With a pair of blanked ends featured before the halfway point of the game, one could tell the 2026 showdown was likely to be equally as close.
A four-spot in the second end gave the Alouettes foursome of Sophie Perreault, Zoé Charbonneau, Brianne Portelance and Kalyssa Gibson a little breathing room, but they needed two in the sixth and one final point in the eighth to secure a 7-5 triumph and the first girls playoff championship for Notre-Dame since 2003.
Making a return to the sport after stepping away for a few years, high-school newcomer Zoé Charbonneau stepped right back in at vice, her time in her youth spent at the Coniston Curling Club along with the rest of the Dubuc family clan definitely serving a purpose.
“Just getting back into playing was a challenge, because I really hadn’t been practicing,” noted the 14 year-old grade nine athlete who also a standout talent in ringette. “After a few ice times, I really liked my team and thought we flowed well.”
In skip Sophie Perreault, Charbonneau joins forces with a young curler (Perreault is only in grade 10) who will be leading her club team at the NOCA U20 Provincial Championships at the Idylwylde Golf & Country Club this weekend.
“I put the broom down for her but she really explains where she wants me to put the broom and why, stuff like that,” said Charbonneau. In the final, however, it was more weight over line that spelled success for the young Alouettes.
“I thought we really worked well on the weight of our rocks,” said Charbonneau. “For me personally – and I wouldn’t want to talk for others – I had really struggled, and I thought I did well that game.”
The boys final would see the undefeated Lasalle Lancers taking on a St Charles College Cardinals rink that posted a 4-5-1 record in regular season play but upset higher ranked opponents in both the quarter and semi-finals.
Scoring three in the very first end gave SCC some hope that a third upset might be in the Cards (do not pardon the pun – it was definitely on purpose), but a Lasalle team that boasts four members who experienced OFSAA last March clearly had other ideas in mind.
A Lancers run of 2-2-5-4 spelled the end of this encounter, for all intent and purposes, as Jake Crawford, Vivienne Bolestridge; Caitlyn Connors; Adene Longarini and alternates Veronica Paquette and Quentin Hallock look to make another run at provincials with NOSSA taking place in Sudbury (at the Idylwylde) next week (March 10th – 11th).
“It’s about focus; we need to keep our heads in the game, thinking of our next shot,” said Crawford, who also skips a youth club team at the Idylwylde.
And for as much as Lasalle boasts a healthy mix of club curlers – Bolestridge and Connors are both part of Team Perreault – the 16 year-old last rock thrower acknowledges that there is a bit of a difference to the vibe around the high-school curling scene.
“It’s always all about fun,” stressed Crawford, first and foremost. “ I don’t want to say that high-school is more about fun, but it is more about getting young people into the sport. A lot of curlers who now curl in men’s leagues started with high-school curling.”
And that might be the case, down the road, for the St Charles multi-sport cohort of Carter Baron, Evan Bryant, Gavin Stuart and Leon Sauve, who settled for silver but will still get to experience NOSSA competition in their hometown. Far less experienced in curling than the Lasalle coed crew, the Cardinals could present a threat; if allowed to play their game.
“I tried to keep a pretty clear house,” said Crawford. “Looking at their earlier games today, they love rocks in play - and that’s what happened in the first end. They really outplayed us and then we adjusted.”
