The third time proved to be a charm for the Yukoners at this year's M&M Meats Canadian Junior Curling Championships.

Amongst a tough field, the Yukon men's and women's teams combined for an impressive eight wins in what was their third junior curling nationals. The junior nationals wrapped up on Sunday.

In addition to the wins, Wade Scoffin, the coach of the Yukon junior men's team, was given one of the two coaching awards. Manitoba's Rob Meakin won the honour for the junior women's side.

It was an outstanding week for 15-year-old Sarah Koltun, who's Yukon rink finished 5-7. Team Koltun went out on a winning not, beating Quebec 9-6 to conclude the round robin on Friday.

The Yukon girls' tied New Brunswick for ninth place and finished with as many wins as Quebec and Saskatchewan.

This was a much better result for Team Koltun, which went 0-12 at the 2008 junior nationals.

Some of the highlights for the Yukon junior women's team included handing Alberta one of its two round robin losses and defeating Manitoba, which was the defending champion.

On the junior men's side, Yukoner Thomas Scoffin, 14, finished 3-9. Team Scoffin's record placed them 12th overall, ahead of the Northwest Territories. The team also tied Nova Scotia in wins.

Scoffin's win total was just one shy of equaling last year's mark of four.

"I think the guys learned a lot and that was certainly one of my goals," said Wade. "I know the guys certainly hoped to get more wins, but the way that they played in the majority of the games everything went really well."

Thirteen men's and women's teams made up the field, which included the 10 provinces, as well as Northern Ontario, Northwest Territories and the Yukon.

The first place squads, after the conclusion of the round robin, qualified to their respective finals, while finishers in second and third meet in Saturday's semi-finals.

The winners of the nationals will represent Canada at the 2009 World Junior Curling Championships, which is being held March 5-15 in Vancouver.

Prince Edward Island defeated Northern Ontario in the junior men's final, while Manitoba's Kaitlyn Lawes, 20, won the title for a second straight year.

This was only the second time a team from P.E.I has won a nationals junior men's curling championship. The province's last title came in 1976.

Since 1975, Canada has won 16 world junior men's titles and eight women's championships since 1988.

The Scoffin rink faced a couple of tough opponents in Northern Ontario and Newfoundland to kick off the round robin last week. After dropping the first two, Scoffin rebounded to win a close game against Saskatchewan.

The game featured 10 one point ends. However, thanks to scoring back-to-back points in the fourth and fifth ends, Team Scoffin was able to get a 5-4 win, handing Saskatchewan its first loss of the championships.

The victory over Saskatchewan was followed up by an 8-4 loss to New Brunswick, which was undefeated at the time. New Brunswick scored five points in the third, which created too much of a deficit to overcome for the Yukoners.

The Yukoners lost four more consecutive games, including a difficult 8-6 loss to Alberta, which took advantage of having the hammer in the 10th end in the win.

A 4-1 win over N.W.T. got the Yukon boys back on track and the team followed that up by beating Nova Scotia 6-4.

The victory against Nova Scotia was a little harder for Scoffin's team, which scored two points in the eighth and one more in the ninth and 10th ends.

Team Scoffin lost both of its final two games on Friday to finish the round robin. The first loss was against P.E.I. and the second was against Quebec.

Among the highlights for the Yukon's junior men's team was lead Mitchell Young nearly making the tournament's All-star team. Young finished with an 81 percentage, tying him with four other curlers.

"Mitchell did really great," Wade said. "He was steady all the way through and was just a fraction of a percentage points from qualifying for the all-star team, so it was really nice for him to be able to have a good solid week."

The other two members on Team Scoffin include William Mahoney and Nicholas Koltun Wade credited the team with helping him win the coaching award. Both the junior men's and women's awards were nominated by fellow coaches, which meant a lot to Wade.

"That's the neat part more than anything else," he said. "The awards that the kids value the most is the sportsmanship awards because that's voted on by your peers.

This is very similar."

He said it was nice to see the Yukon's girls' team do so well.

"I really want to recognized and acknowledge the young ladies that we travelled with," Wade said. "They did terrific. It was wonderful watching them get the awards and the successes that they did. They certainly peeked this week and had been building towards that and it's something that really needs to be acknowledged and recognized."

The Yukon junior women's team also began the round robin with two straight losses against Northern Ontario and Newfoundland, before beating Saskatchewan.

Against Saskatchewan, Team Koltun broke open what was a tie game in the sixth end, scoring three points. The team added one more point in each the eighth and ninth end to win 7-6.

Saskatchewan leads all provinces and territories on the junior women's side, winning 10 Canadian titles.

Despite beating the most successful province in women's junior nationals history, the Yukoners lost their next three games, including a tough 7-6 extra end loss to B.C.

The defeat to B.C. dropped the team's record to 1-5. However, the Yukon foursome didn't get down about the close defeat and went on to defeat Alberta 6-5. The girls needed an extra end and took advantage of having last rock to get their second win at the championships.

The extra-end win got the ball rolling for the Yukoners, who last Wednesday defeated defending champions Manitoba 8-6.

The Yukoners stormed back after giving up four points in the final end before the half. The team scored four of its own in the sixth end and then added three single points to its total in the seventh, eighth and ninth ends. The loss brought Manitoba's record down to 5-3.

The Yukon girls made it three straight with Thursday's win over the N.W.T. Against the N.W.T., Team Koltun took a 4-1 lead into the fifth-end break and then added two more points n the sixth and three in the eighth to win 9-4.

The Yukoners didn't have much time to savor their success and were back in action later on Thursday against Nova Scotia.

In what turned into a very close contest, the Yukon needed to steal one point to force an extra end. However Nova Scotia took advantage of having last rock and scored three in the 10th, which stopped the Yukon from reaching the .500 mark.

The final score was 10-6.

On Friday, Team Koltun lost a close match against P.E.I. The island province came back after falling behind 6-5, scoring two points in the final end to win by one.

The team's next contests was against Quebec and thanks to a few multi-point ends, Team Koltun went on to win 9-6.

The final win helped Team Koltun meet its championship goal of winning five games.

Other members on Team Koltun include Chelsea Duncan, Linea Eby, Jenna Duncan and team coach Lindsey Moldowan.