Huge congratulations to ICA member Margarita Sweeney-Baird, who has been awarded the British Empire Medal in the New Year Honours’ List.

Margarita is chairperson and founder of Inclusive Skating and the driving force behind the Global Project for Inclusive Skating and the Charity.

A former Scottish ladies skating champion and skating coach in the UK, she originally took a year-long sabbatical from her distinguished legal career to mastermind this project. The sabbatical started in 2010 and was extended because the competition format she created worked better than she could ever have hoped.

Margarita’s daughter Juliana is an Inclusive Skater.

Well done Margarita and well deserved!

Festive spirit abounded in Stirling yesterday as 16 curlers took to the ice for the Winter Bonspiel. Eoin McCrossan skipped his team of John Burns, Niamh Begly and Eleanor Burns to an 8-6 win over Arran Cameron, Paul Cromey, special guest Shelagh Fulton and Kerianne Cox. An aggressive approach was adopted by both skips with plenty of stones in play, the game turned with an excellently judged runback for 4 made by the McCrossan team.

Victory overall however went to the team of David Hume, Margarita Sweeney-Baird, Sue Scotland and Frances Donald who pipped Ian Donald, Dave McHale, Isla Kinnear and Maria O’Neill. David raced out into a 7-1 lead before a huge score of 4 brought everything into play. David and team held their nerve and scored a single point in the final end for a winning score of 8-5.

David thanked his team for their efforts and to all those who had made the trip out. Special mention must go firstly to Sue Scotland and her amazingly festive reindeer bonnet and secondly to Frances Donald who provided tasty chocolate treats to all, which definitely made all the difference in those fully swept shots.

The Irish women’s team reached the quarter-finals of the Dumfries Seniors Open this weekend thanks to the injection of two Irish curlers based in Canada.

Dale Curtis and Bernie Gillett came from Ontario to play adding their skills to the team going to Kelowna for the World Senior Championships in April, 2020.

The Irish men also used the competition for practice.

Ireland’s mixed doubles pairing of Alison Fyfe and John Wilson ended with an 8-7 win over Belgium in the world qualifier at Greenacres but didn’t get one of the top two spots in their group, finishing third. Therefore, Ireland won’t get the chance to play for a place in the world mixed doubles curling championships this season.

Team Ireland had two more games today at the qualifier for the World Mixed Double Championships:

IRELAND 13 SAUDI ARABIA 1

IRELAND 4 FRANCE 6

Alison and John have played three games so far, winning two and losing one.

Scores:

IRELAND 9 ROMANIA 6

IRELAND 4 TURKEY 10

IRELAND 10 BRAZIL 7