The notion of the SDSSAA (Sudbury District Secondary Schools Athletic Association) gold medal winning rinks differing from the regular season champions – both of whom would earn a berth at the NOSSA festivities March 4th/5th in Sault Ste Marie – is not terribly unusual.

The manner in which this came to be on Tuesday, however, was a bit more unexpected.

The top seeded Lasalle “B”* squad (Jake Crawford, Vivienne Bolestridge, Erik Limarilli, Quentin Hallock) had already been upset 10-4 in one semi-final by Macdonald-Cartier when the “A” Lancers team took an 8-5 lead into the eighth end against the Collège Notre-Dame Alouettes boys team.

*(Lasalle "B" advanced to NOSSA by virtue of finishing first in regular season play)

“We still held on to some hope,” noted 17 year-old skip Sebastien Perreault, his team not even holding the hammer after having scored one in the seventh. “I’m not going to discount the fact that there was a lot of luck involved with that last end.”

“I think at that point, there was no need to stress about it too much,” added Perreault, a curler since the age of four and partnered with vice Loic Ouimet since the pair were in grade seven together. “There would be a miracle or we would lose.”

Miracle might be a tad over the top, but certainly putting up a five spot to steal an 8-6 win was not where the odds were sitting as the Alouettes (Linkoln Dufoe, Travis Shamess, Brayden Crépeault, Darius Hodak) kept on rolling, bouncing the ESMC (Ecole secondaire Macdonald-Cartier) Panthères 10-4 in the final.

The CND boys will be joined by the school’s girls team (Sophie Perreault, Rheanna Crépeault, Brianne Portelance, Madison Heaton, Gabrielle Marquis), even though the crew that showed the way in regular season play (7-1-1) were on the wrong end of an 8-5 scoreboard to the now three-time champion Marymount Academy Regals in the city final.

“I was super scared that I would be the reason we would lose the banner this year,” noted grade nine newcomer Grace Schmidt, as the Marymount OFSAA silver medal winning team from last March graduated all but 2024-2025 skip Kameron Tellier.

Thankfully, in Schmidt, they added an experienced curler who has frequented the Idylwylde since 2017 or so. “Julia (Hayden) and Danielle (Levasseur) are new to curling,” said Schmidt. “They are super brave for even trying out.”

“I would say that our biggest improvement has been weight control,” she added. “We had zero weight control at the beginning, to be honest. We’re starting to get the hits, but for now, we’ll stick with mostly draws.”

Collège Notre-Dame downed the Bishop Carter Gators in one semi-final earlier in the day while the Marymount Regals upended the St Charles College Cardinals while on their way to the gold medal encounter.