The 2007 USCA Junior Nationals are under way at the Granite Curling Club in Seattle WA, and the Minnesota teams are coming on strong. Chris Plys‘ rink is in a three way tie for first place with Wisconsin and North Dakota, and on the women’s side, the Aileen Sormunen rink is in second place behind Massachusets.

The semi-finals are tomorrow (friday) and finals are saturday. You can find the end-by-end scoring here: 2007 USCA Junior Nationals

Last saturday there was a fantastic event at the Duluth Curling Club– a bonspiel for beginners to raise funds for the Katie Beck Memorial Fund. Katie Beck died last december of Ewing’s sarcoma, cutting short a promising curling career.

The format of the bonspiel was three four end games, with teams comprised of two beginners and two more experienced curlers (including an Olympic medalist, pictured at right below). I got to play with Kevin Johnson, who just returned from bringing home gold at the World University Games in Pinerolo, Italy.

This event was put together quickly, but had 16 teams participate, everyone had a ball, and over $1400 was raised. Thank you Tiffany and everyone else who contributed to organizing this event!

If anyone has any other pictures from this ’spiel, send them to me at andy@curlduluth.com, and I’ll post them for all to see.