Three-time Scottish Junior Champions Team Carson made a major breakthrough when they came through a powerful field to claim their first senior title at The Mercure Perth Masters at the Dewar Centre.
The all-teenage quartet of Orrin Carson, younger brother Logan, Archie Hyslop and Charlie Gibb exceeded even their own expectations as they topped their qualifying group, then sailed through the knockout stages.
A 7-3 quarter-final defeat of Japan’s Team Morozumi was followed by a 7-5 win over fellow Scots Team Bryce, before they met a host rink quartet containing 2018 Olympians Glen and Thomas Muirhead in what proved to be a one-sided final. 
A four at the opening end put the youngsters in command of the match and when they restricted Team Muirhead to two at the next, then scored three more at the third to move into a 7-2 lead there was little prospect of a comeback and a 9-3 win was wrapped up with a two at the fifth end.
It was the first time in six years that new names have been put on the trophy since world number one ranked Team Mouat has dominated this event, winning it every time since 2018.
As Orrin Carson acknowledged, their absence, along with that of last season’s beaten finalists Team Whyte, who are also in Canada preparing for the next Grand Slam event, had opened things up.
However, they still out-performed an impressive field which included this season’s European Championship bronze medallists Team Ramsfjell from Norway and Switzerland’s world number 12 ranked Team Brunner.
“This Is really exciting and we are really happy with our performance over the week and we hope to keep that going into the rest of the season,” said the 19-year-old skip.
“The strength of field this year possibly wasn’t as strong as previous years which possibly gave us a better chance but we played a strong game overall in all our matches and I think this is the first year that we really believed that we can qualify at these events and start competing at a lot of them.
“We knew we were coming into this final against the home favourites and we took that as inspiration to try and beat them and we did and we are really happy with how we went about doing that.”
He believes they are seeing the benefits of having joined the British Curling programme at performance foundation level, allowing them to up their workload.
“We are training three times a week now which is a lot more than we used to do in previous years and we are starting to see the benefits of that, so hopefully we can keep building on that and see where we go from here,” said Carson. 
His father and team coach Ryan Carson noted, however, that it was the quality of the work they are doing as well as the increased quantity that is making the difference following the recruitment to their backroom team of Alan Hannah, who previously guided Team Mouat to Olympic and World Championship finals.
“The biggest change they have made this year is that they have concentrated on a lot of technical work with Alan,” said Carson senior.
“We have divided up the coaching so that I remain team coach and Alan is taking on the technical work and they have come on leaps and bounds.
“They have ironed out a few problems, so shot making consistency is a lot higher so far this season and hopefully that will continue at the back end of the season.”
He added that they had benefited from having to learn difficult lessons in the early part of the season as they looked to adapt to senior level and felt that a title win which exceeded even their own expectations, was a reward for the way they absorbed them.
“The experience they have had at men’s games at the start of the season, not qualifying in events, has set them in good stead,” he observed.
“We were hoping to qualify for the first time at a men’s competition here, which was one of our big goals for the season, but to win it was tremendous against the local heroes.
“They were up against teams in the top 30 in the world here and we just want to compete with those guys, but they gained confidence when they actually got to the knock-out and played even better and that is a great sign.
“It shows that all the hard work that the boys are doing is starting to pay off. That is good going into the start of this year as there is a lot to do.” 
Orrin now heads to the FISU Winter World University Games (WUGS) in Torino later this week to represent GB students in the mixed doubles discipline with fellow Dumfries curler Robyn Munro and his father believes that is also helping develop his game.
“We have to be adaptable in this game now,” said Ryan.
“It has been pointed out to us at British Curling level that there is more than one discipline to play now and all the team is buying into that now, especially Orrin.
“He is looking forward to going to WUGS and you can see opportunities in that going forward in both disciplines.
“He just loves playing curling and they are happy with any challenge that comes, but playing mixed doubles also gives them practice to play the clutch shots.”
The Perth Masters women’s event was won by Switzerland’s world number nine ranked Team Schwaller, who beat China’s Team Wang 7-4 in the final.
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