The Yukon's junior men's and ladies curling teams are in final preparations for the Karcher Canadian junior championships in Fredericton, New Brunswick, which will take place Feb. 5-13.

The teams and their coaches leave on Thursday and are hoping for similar success to last year, when the men's squad got off to a hot start and ended up with four wins while the ladies picked up their first victory in three years and ended up with three wins in total.

Skip Trevor Prosko, Alexx Peech, Steven Boyd and Cole Hume will once again represent the Yukon in junior men's competition while there will be one change to the ladies rink. Skip Ladene Shaw, Mandi Shaw and Jessie Leschart are back once again, but this time minus Stacey Sellars. Tara Klippert will take Sellars' spot.

'It's a challenge,' said Leschart about playing with a new member. 'We're used to the same team for the past few years.'

It's for that reason that Ladene said the team got off to a slow start this season, although they did dominate the Watson Lake rink at the Yukon championships. But, she added, after their first win over the 'boys' (Prosko and compnay) during league play last night, they seem to be peaking at just the right time.

Coach Gary Hewitt said the addition of Klippert has been positive for the team.

'It's enabled us to juggle our positions a little bit. We've moved Mandi to third and she fits right in.

'Tara did go to school with two of the girls, so she's not really coming in cold.'

So heading into nationals, the local ladies believe they can make a repeat of last season.

'We'd like to win a few games,' stated Leschart. 'I think if we win the same amount of games as last time, that's pretty good.'

The competition, she added, gets better every year, so the Yukon rink may be in tough with a new team member. But they've been putting in more time at the gym and practing both harder and more often.

'We may have trouble maybe with the time change,' said said. 'It's four hours ahead and jet lag is always tough.'

Hewitt said the girls were supposed to be getting up early for the past few days in order to adjust to the time change.

'We're supposed to be operating two hours ahead for the last week.'

The team will arrive late Thursday night and play their first game against Quebec on Saturday afternoon. Last year's nationals were very emotional for the ladies squad, who admittedly cried after their first win.

'We just cried, right there on the ice,' laughed Leschart. 'It was just, Oh my god, we did it.' And we just lost it.''

And this year's event also has the potential for some tears, as this will be Ladene's last time competing at the competition and the rest of the team isn't sure if they will continue on in competitive curling next year.

'Who knows what's going to happen in the future,' said Leschart. 'Last year, we weren't too keen on coming back, but we're here.'

Leschart said because it's their last year together, the main goal this weekend is just to maintain team unity, especially since all of them are feeling very tired.

'If we're still friends when we get back, we'll be happy.'

Men's coach Gord Moffatt said his rink is expecting to do better than last year, although he didn't want to give any specific goals.

'I think they'll do OK. They're certainly ready to go. They're excited, they're pumped and they will perform to their ability, I have no doubt about that.

'I would be ecstatic if we made the playoffs. It's possible, but we'll play it by ear and see what happens.'

Moffatt expects the competition will be a little bit tougher this year, since a lot of the teams are repeats. The last time a Yukon rink made the playoffs at junior nationals was 1993. That was the last year Moffatt was involved in coaching juniors.

'It's been a long time, and I'm looking forward to it,' he stated. 'They (the Prosko rink) have been a challenge through the year, but I am emjoying it.'

While Prosko won't play his first game until Saturday afternoon, Moffatt is still somewhat concerned about jet leg, although they will be able to sleep Friday morning before they attend an afternoon function.

'Big time, we're worried about jet lag,' adding he was just down in Kelowna where he heard their junior team has been running on East Coast time for the past two weeks to get used to it.

'One of the coaches here recommended we do that, but it's pretty tough for these guys because they're all writing final exams right now. So year, we're going to have jet leg problems and probably around Tuesday it will catch up with us. We'll survive though.'

Since Prosko won the Yukon championships at the beginning of last month, Moffatt said the rink is starting to take practice more seriously. While they only have one official practice every week, as well as two league games, a couple of them have been practicing every day.

Last year was the team's first year curling together, which is what made the four wins at nationals impressive. At the time, Peech talked about their three-year plan, which now seems right on track.

'This year (2004), our goal is to win four games,' he said at the time. 'We have sort of a three-year plan with the team. Next year, we'll try and get into the playoffs. And the last year, we'll be trying to win the tournament. I think it's a reasonable goal.'

Moffatt said that three-year plan is still intact, which the team actually discussed last night.

'They're still thinking that, that they want to give it one more shot after this year,' said Moffatt. 'Last night, they were sure keen on doing this again.'

As for whether Moffatt will coach them again, he said that all depends on the outcome of this season, and the start of next.

Thirteen men's and 13 ladies teams (10 provinces plus Northern Ontario, Yukon and the N.W.T.) are set to compete at the Karcher juniors. At the conclusion of the round-robin, the first place teams advance to their respective finals, while the second and third place finishers meet in the semi-finals.

The men's final is Saturday, February 12 while the ladies final is Sunday, February 13.