Scotland’s Team Craik secured their place in the knockout stages at the World Junior Curling Championships with a comprehensive 11-4 victory over hosts Sweden that also kept them in pole position in the round-robin standings. 
Tied with Germany on seven wins and just one loss to this stage, their win over the Germans earlier in the event means they will finish top if they beat Switzerland in their last round-robin encounter tomorrow, ensuring they will have the hammer in any matches they have in the playoffs.
The defeat of the Swedes was their second win of the day, following up on a similarly dominant 9-2 win against Norway who had also been sharing top spot in the standings when the day began.
“It was much the same as this morning,” skip James Craik said of the nature of their win over Sweden.
“We came out really, really sharp, used the hammer well and scoring lots of multiples, capitalised on any errors that they made and produced a good performance all round tonight.”
He believes that the way they are playing owes much to the benefit of mixing with senior teams in the course of the season.
“Over the course of the season we’ve played in a lot of men’s competitions, which has taught us the importance of utilising the hammer when we have it because steals don’t come around too often,” he explained.
“So this week our hammer efficiency is really strong and I think that’s been one of our key advantages over other teams.”
While they now have the assurance of knowing they have a semi-final place, Craik and teammates Angus Bruce, Scott Hyslop and Niall Ryder are in no mood to relax as they look to round off the first phase of this campaign. 
“We go into tomorrow’s game with much the same intensity,” their skip promised.
“We’ve got a bit of a roll going now. We dropped one game against Canada yesterday, but we bounced back huge this morning and then that was another sharp performance tonight.
“So we just want to go out, set a marker down for the playoffs and then hopefully keep it going into those.”
Compatriots Team Henderson had only one match on the day and after a tough battle with Korea, ultimately suffered a 9-8 extra end defeat, but their skip was by no means down-hearted.
“Taking Korea right to the extra end was a good performance,” said Fay Henderson.
“We had a couple of good scoring ends and we lost a three but managed to bounce straight back with one, so I think that gave us a bit of confidence and kept our heads in the game.
“We just had a couple of loose shots and some things happened that meant we had to re-group and move on a couple of times during the game, but we kept our heads up, kept fighting and were determined to fight to the last stone.
“The ice started to go a wee bit flat by the end, so it was bit more of a struggle just to get fine placements with stones and ultimately only scoring one in 10 took us to an extra.
“At the extra end we had to steal and we had a couple of guards up but just never got great placement around them. 
“I had a draw round to the four foot behind a guard and just left half of it showing and she played a touch weight for the nose and the win.”
The defeat extinguished their remote hopes of reaching the playoffs, but they are determined to finish as well as possible when they meet Sweden and Denmark on the last day of the round-robin and try to secure a place in the top seven which would confirm Scottish involvement in next year’s World Junior Championships.
“Two games tomorrow, so hopefully we can just get two wins, finish the week on a high and go home being proud of our performances,” said Henderson.
“Obviously we’ve had a couple of loose shots here and there, but we’ve played 10 ends every game and not been out of any game at all.
“We’ve kept fighting and kept our heads up and two wins tomorrow will be really good for the confidence and hopefully keep Scotland with a spot in the World A’s for next year.”
Live games will be available to watch through The Curling Channel in partnership with Recast.
Scotland – Team Craik
James Craik
Angus Bryce
Scott Hyslop
Niall Ryder
Jack Carrick
Scotland – Team Henderson
Fay Henderson
Katie McMillan
Lisa Davie
Holly Wilkie-Milne
Robyn Mitchell
Sunday 15 May (all times BST)
Scotland – Korea (men) 8-5
Scotland – Canada (women) 9-7
Scotland – USA (men) 9-1
Monday 16 May
Scotland – USA (women) 8-9
Scotland – New Zealand (men) 10-5
Scotland – Switzerland (women) 3-8
Tuesday 17 May
Scotland – Germany (men) 6-4
Scotland – Japan (women) 4-7
Scotland – Italy (men) 6-4
Wednesday 18 May
Scotland – Norway (women) 7-9
Scotland – Canada (men) 6-7 (EE)
Scotland – Latvia (women) 7-5
Thursday 19 May
Scotland – Norway (men) 9-2
Scotland – Korea (women) 8-9 (EE)
Scotland – Sweden (men) 11-4
Friday 20 May
Scotland – Sweden (women) – 8.00am
Scotland – Switzerland (men) – 1.00pm
Scotland – Denmark (women) - 6.00pm
Saturday 21 May
Men’s Semi Final – 1.00pm
Women’s Semi Final – 6.00pm
Sunday 22 May
Men’s Finals - 8.00am
Women’s Finals - 1.00pm
Image: WCF/Cheyenne Boone
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