Cochrane curler Julianna MacKenzie is a member of the Crough team that's representing Alberta in the 2021 New Holland World Juniors Qualifier to select Team Canada.

The Crough team won the qualifier in a tough field of seven teams in Airdrie, Oct. 20-24, and are now preparing to compete against other Canadian finalists in Saskatoon, Nov. 22-27. The winner will represent Canada in the U21 World Championship being hosted by Sweden, Mar. 5-12, 2022.

Team Crough finished on top of the round-robin, losing only one game in extra ends to Team Bakker, a team MacKenzie has previously curled with. They earned a bye into the final and beat Team Booth, 7-5, in a game that came down to the final rock. Skip Crough drew to the button to win.

"We're stoked because this is our last kick at the can," says MacKenzie. "It's a little bit of a different event, especially with COVID, and we're not sure how things are going to look, but we're still excited to be representing Alberta at nationals."

This one-of-a-kind event was created because the junior national event couldn't be held last year due to the pandemic. It's for the teams that would have had age eligibility last year and would have had a chance to advance to the worlds.

MacKenzie says the team has been training hard and they targeted winning this tournament as their first step in reaching the next level of elite play.

"We've checked that off, so now our next step is to win nationals and represent Canada. We work with our coach (Mark Johnson) and he's really supportive and gives us all the steps we need to succeed."

It's unusual to play such an intense bonspiel this early in the season, but the pandemic has dealt a different hand for most sports.

"We not usually playing eight games in early October, but we were training so hard this summer in the gym that we were physically prepared for it."

Also competing in the women's event from Cochrane was Zoe Cinnamon, third on Team Gray-Withers.

On the men's side, Max Cinnamon was lead on Team Wipf. There were nine teams in the U21 men's event.