Some mid-week woes would lead to a middle of the road performance for both of the Northern Ontario entries that featured Sudbury connections at the 2025 New Holland Under-20 Curling Championships last week in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.

The NOCA junior women's championship rink of Mia Toner, Dayna Wahl, Justine Toner and Samantha Digiglio started well enough, picking up wins over the Northwest Territories (10-3) and the host team from P.E.I. (7-1).

Unfortunately, they would not taste victory again until game seven as setbacks versus Manitoba (Shaela Hayward - 13-4), Nova Scotia (Rebecca Regan - 8-3), British Columbia (Holly Hafeli - 7-4) and Quebec (Jolianne Fortin - 10-3) pretty much derailed any hopes that Team Toner might have entertained about a possible playoff berth.

A split of their final two outings - 7-4 win versus Ontario #2 (Katrina Frlan) and a 10-6 loss to Alberta #2 (Gravelynn Richards) - left the team sitting at 3-5 and tied for 6th (with Manitoba) in the nine team pool.

Meanwhile, over on the men's side of the draw, Sudbury skip Brendan Rajala and the Sault Ste Marie trio of Justin MacKay, Ben Miskiw and Jake Clouthier were sitting at 2-2 as they tackled the second half of their week.

Team Rajala had teeter-tottered between losses to Alberta (Jace Freeman - 11-9) and New Brunswick (Ryan Dalrymple - 7-4) and wins over Ontario (Noah Garner - 10-4) and Prince Edward Island (Jack MacFadyen - 7-5) in the early going.

But much like the Northern Ontario women, the lads would taste defeats at the hands of both Newfoundland (Simon Perry - 14-2) and Nova Scotia (Calan MacIsaac - 9-4) in their next two outings, meaning that back to back wins to close out the week (Alberta #2 - Peter Hlushak - 6-5) and British Columbia - Harrison Hrynew - 11-1) were rendered somewhat inconsequential.

A final record of 4-4 found the NOCA #1 rink smack dab in the middle of Pool A, tied for 5th place. A second NOCA men's entry of Riley Winters, Wesley Decary, Grayson Gribbon and Aidan Baxter from the North Bay Granite Club picked up some valuable experience as the young foursome closed out their first visit to nationals at 1-7.

A highlight, from a Northern Ontario standpoint, came in the form of the 2025 National Coaching Award being presented to long-time Team Rajala head coach Brian Rajala, who was presented the honour by Helen Radford (Curling Canada - Manager of NextGen and Podium Pathway).