Team Koltun began its pursuit of a second straight Scotties appearance over the weekend.

The Yukon women’s curling team led by Sarah Koltun went 3-2 at the Cloverdale Cash Spiel in Surrey, B.C., getting knocked out of competition in the quarter-finals yesterday.

Chilliwack’s Team Prinse ousted the Koltun rink with a 9-6 victory in eight ends.

The playoff berth earned the Whitehorse squad $700, which served as a reimbursement of their bonspiel fees.

Koltun, 21, said her squad has one goal on its mind this season – a return to the Scotties.

“Overall, we played pretty well especially for the first few games of the season,” she told the Star this morning. “It was a good way to start off the season – especially with the three wins right away.

“At the end of the day, we played pretty well and it’s just our first spiel of the year. We’ll just take what we can from it.”

Team Koltun rapped off three straight wins to open the bonspiel, defeating New Westminster’s Diane Gushulak 6-2, Richmond’s Kelly Shimizu 12-5 and Delta’s Sarah Daniels 6-4.

Team Koltun dropped its final game of pool play 11-5 to the event’s defending champion, Patti Knezevic of Prince George.

Despite the playoff loss, the Yukon rink did finish second in scoring at the 15-team event by averaging 9.72 points per game, behind only eventual champion Sijia Liu of China.

Joining Koltun on the ice this weekend were longtime mates Chelsea Duncan, Patty Wallingham, and Jenna Duncan.

Unlike last year, when Koltun and Wallingham remained in the territory for extra training, the group decided to return to college this season.

While Koltun is attending Trinity Western University, Wallingham is enrolled at Douglas College while Jenna Duncan is studying at Simon Fraser University.

Chelsea Duncan remains at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Koltun said the team has four more bonspiels planned this season, before Scotties playdowns begin.

Any successes this season will be the result of plenty of hard work the skip acknowledged.

“Our last two games we didn’t play very well,” Koltun said. “Both games we could have won, but we were just making too many little mistakes.

“We’ve learned a lot and we know where we need to go.”