In a thrilling final to the 2008 Yukon/NWT Men's Curling Championship that featured two of Whitehorse's best curlers, it was the Chad Cowan rink who managed to get a close 8-7 victory over Team John Solberg.

With Sunday's victory, Cowan, along with teammates, Wade Scoffin, James Buyck and Clint Ireland, will be the representing team for all three of the territories at this year's Tim Hortons' Brier, being held in Winnipeg, Manitoba from March 8-12.

"It feels great, it is always awesome to qualify for the Brier," said Cowan. "We came out here playing as hard as we possibly could. We knew that John's team was going to be a tough team."

The championship was hosted at the Whitehorse Curling Club from Feb. 14-17 and featured four teams in total. Two teams were from the Yukon, while the remaining two were from the Northwest Territories (NWT), which includes Nunavut for the Brier qualification. The event used a double round robin format where each team played every opponent twice over the course of the four days.

The final was an incredibly close match, which needed an extra end to decide a winner and where the majority of the points that were awarded often came down to the final rock that was thrown.

Earlier in the day, Solberg had a chance to win the championship in a 10 a.m. draw time match against the Steve Moss rink of the NWT.

Moss's team just managed to get the victory over Solberg, which forced a three way tiebreaker after Cowan's rink won their game against D'arcy Delorey's NWT squad.

A skills competition was held to decide who got a bye into the final by having each member on a team draw to the button. The team with the shortest accumulative distance was awarded the beth in the finals. Cowan's team won the competition with a total distance of 85.3 cm, while Solberg's rink came in second with 99.0 cm.

As a result, Solberg had to play Moss in the semi-finals, which were held Sunday afternoon.

Team Solberg managed to double up on Moss's rink 6-3, scoring two points in the first, two in the fourth and one in both the seventh and 10th end to get the victory.

The final draw time was at 7:00 p.m. The match started off with Cowan successfully being able to hit and roll the sole Solberg stone out of the house, along with his own rock to retain the hammer into the second end, while keeping the score tied at 0-0.

After each team traded points in the second and third end, Solberg managed to successfully draw his final shot in between two guards to rob Cowan of two points, taking a 2-1 lead into the fifth.

After hitting and sticking for three points, Solberg forced Cowan to take the single point with his last stone in the fifth to draw even in the match.

The sixth end of the game featured the first multi-point score in favour of Solberg, who reclaimed the lead. The skip, lying one rock already in the house, attempted to angle his guard into the house along with his last stone, which would have counted for three points, however the angle was off by just a bit and Solberg was only able to score two.

The seventh end was the turning point for the Cowan rink, who made three great shots, which helped knock out several Team Solberg stones.

Cowan set himself up with five of his stones in the house for Solberg's final shot in the end.

With his final stone, Solberg attempted to knock out as many Cowan rocks as possible, but could only managed to remove one, setting up Cowan for an easy draw into the house for five points. This gave Cowan a commanding 7-4 lead late in the game.

The Solberg rink refused to give up though and rebounded very nicely in the eighth end. With Cowan lying two right on the button, Solberg, with his last rock, made an amazing double raised, double takeout shot to score a total of three points, putting him right back into the match.

After conceding a point in the ninth to give Solberg the one point lead, Cowan attempted to win the match in the 10th by scoring two with the last rock shot.

With the hammer, Cowan had a straight runback shot for two, but he was off slightly and could only manage to get the one point, which forced the game into an extra end.

In the 11th after a couple of great draws by both teams, Cowan was lying one with a guard, forcing Solberg to attempt an angle raised takeout, but he just missed removing Cowan's stone to lose the game 9-8.

This will be Cowan's third Brier appearance and he managed to qualify for all of them in a tiebreaker at the championship.

His first Brier was in 2000 and his second, which also included teammate Scoffin was in 2003. At both Brier tournaments his team went 3-8, but Cowan's goal for this year's competition is to better that record.

He said his match against Solberg's team was the toughest game of the event.

"To go an extra end like that, to come right down to the wire and (with) all those rocks that were in play," Cowan said. "It was overwhelming all the shots that we were looking at."

Cowan said conceding a point so late in the game is a risk, but he felt more comfortable with the option of being able to score two with last rock over trying to win it without the hammer by scoring one point.

He said nothing compares to the Brier in the sport of curling.

"Even the champions of the Brier when they go on to play in the World's, they say it is not like the Brier," Cowan said. "There is just so much more hype to the Brier. That is the tournament of all tournaments. That is where they have the most fans; the stands are just packed with people. It is by far the top event and then to represent the north is great, too."

Cowan said he is excited about the event and he has never been more confident heading into a Brier event than he is with the current team he is curling with.

"My team curled phenomenal, we are that much more experienced now," he said. "We keep shooting like we were shooting there (at the championship) then I think we have some possibilities to win some games out."