The Whitehorse Curling Club hosted the 12th annual Tetra Tech 2018 Mixed Bonspiel over the weekend. Sixteen teams participated in the spiel, which featured two turkey shoots and an alternative scoring system.

The scoring system is unique to the Tetra Tech, as it is the only bonspiel held at the club with this particular format.

Organizer Don Wilson says the system is implemented to give all players a chance.

“It’s been this way a couple of years,” said Don. “The format is to give everybody a fairly equal opportunity. You don’t have to be great curlers if you have good strategy. You can score on almost every end and if you blank an end each team gets half a point.

“The team with hammer has to score two rocks to get a point. If a team steals they get one point, so the maximum points scored in an end is only ever one point. It’s meant to make it fun.”

Players of all skill levels and ages participated in the bonspiel. The eight sheets of ice were all filled, as 64 players took part. According to organizer Laura Wilson the bonspiel encourages all curlers to come out and have a good time.

“It’s a very popular sport,” said Laura. “Friday nights is a fun league that a lot of people participate in so that keeps the youth coming into the club. Monday and Wednesday nights are more mixed fun leagues and Tuesday and Thursday are more competitive. We pretty much have 16 teams playing every night. We got a ton of different skills.

“We got lucky that a few people put their name forward just to be skips and had three brand new curlers so that was awesome,” said Laura. “It’s great development it’s just fun and nobody is getting blown out of the water. There is no pressure, a lot of people are new curlers.”

As well as the curling, players were also able to shoot for a turkey, a tradition that has been happening for a few years.

“We put a slider on a turkey and a handle, and we push the turkey down the ice and the closest to the button wins the turkey,” said Laura. “It’s been happening in the past, we do it at a lot of the Christmas parties as well. Bernie Adilman won two turkeys, and Adam George and Tess Lawrence won the others.”

The theme of the weekend was fun as it gave curlers of all skill levels the opportunity to play.

“Most of the teams out here have new curlers and people who are not members of the club and they are just out for their first bonspiel ever,” said Don. “Some people are out and it’s their first time curling in years and some it’s their first time curling ever.”

The Tetra Tech Bonspiel is supposed to be a good introduction to a bonspiel for new curlers.

“The Tetra Tech Bonspiel started as a fundraiser for the United Way,” said Don.

“But because we had to move it back in November we had to change the format. So it’s now a funspiel and it’s meant to give new curlers a chance to learn and get some practice in.”

The bonspiel was won by Team Burke with 22.5 points.