Scotland’s men and women have both earned their places in the medal matches at the World Junior Championship in Germany after coming through key matches on the final day of the round-robin.
Team Henderson went into their only match of the day knowing they had to beat the USA to be sure of their place in the top four and it was a tense affair that was only decided when opposing skip Tessa Thurlow’s attempted draw to the eight foot came up short of the house, allowing Fay Henderson, Robyn Munro, Holly Wilkie-Milne and Laura Watt to score the two shots that secured an 8-7 win.
“We knew that game counted for the play-offs and the pressure was on,” skip Henderson admitted.
“It was a bit of a rollercoaster scoreline. We were 4-1 up, before we had a difficult end where they scored a three and brought it back to peels, then we were one up at the fifth end break and it was tight all the way after that. 
“We were one down going into the 10th and had to get a steal and played a pretty good end and with my last shot I played a little hit and roll and just managed to miss the back stone, so we asked the question by lying two, putting the pressure on her and her draw just came up a little bit short.”
They eventually finished in third place in the table with a record of six wins and three losses, but know it is now a completely new competition with everything to play for as they prepare to meet Norway in the semi-finals, having lost narrowly to them in the round-robin stage.
“Going into the play-offs now our win-loss record doesn’t matter anymore. Just winning the game in front of you is all that matters and we’ll be looking to do that against Norway in the semi-final,” said Henderson.
She also observed that they are drawing additional inspiration from having two of the best curlers in the global game, Team Mouat’s Grant Hardie and Hammy McMillan who are Munro’s older cousins in the grandstands at the arena in Fussen, cheering them on.
“It’s nice to have some of the guys from Team Mouat out here to support us, showing how much they really do care about the development of curling,” she said.
“So it’s great to have some high profile fans in the stand as well as our families here cheering us on, but we’ve just got to play for ourselves now and we all want to bring back a medal so hopefully we’ll be able to do that.” 
Earlier in the day Team Carson had also faced the USA knowing that victory would ensure that they would reach the semi-finals and after a tight opening half, they powered to victory in the second half of that match, running out 6-2 winners.
That left Orrin and Logan Carson, Archie Hyslop and Charlie Gibb with one final round-robin outing to decide where they would finish in the overall standings and in their evening match they hit form from the outset, taking control of the match with scores of three each time they had the hammer and establishing a 6-2 lead over Norway by the midway interval.
From that point they controlled the scoreboard until, with the score at 8-5, their opponents finally offered handshakes during the 10th end, leaving them joint top of the standings with Germany on a record of seven wins and two losses.
The host nation, whose team contains three of the players who were beaten by Scotland’s Team Craik in last year’s final, held onto top spot overall as a result of winning the head to head between the two, but Team Carson had done enough to secure the hammer in their semi-final against China.
Please click here for the schedule and more information
LIVE streamed games are available on Recast’s The Curling Channel
Scotland women
Fay Henderson
Robyn Munro
Holly Wilkie-Milne
Laura Watt
Amy Mitchell (Alternate)
Colin Morrison (Team Coach)
David Aitken (Head Coach)
Scotland men
Orrin Carson
Logan Carson
Archie Hyslop
Charlie Gibb
Scott Hyslop (Alternate)
Ryan Carson (Team Coach)
David Aitken (Head Coach)
#curling #wjcc2023
Schedule and Results
Game times: 0800, 1300, 1800 (GMT)
Day One – Saturday 25 February
Scotland women
Scotland – Germany 7-5
Scotland men
Scotland – Canada 7-2
Scotland women
Scotland – Latvia 8-5
Day Two – Sunday 26 February
Scotland men
Scotland – Turkiye 8-3
Scotland women
Scotland – Japan 4-3
Scotland men
Scotland – Italy 10-3
Day Three – Monday 27 February
Scotland women
Scotland – Canada 6-7
Scotland men
Scotland – Germany 5-7
Scotland women
Scotland – Sweden 8-6
Day Four – Tuesday 28 February
Scotland men
Scotland – China 3-9
Scotland women
Scotland – Switzerland 2-10
Scotland men
Scotland – Switzerland 8-3
Day Five – Wednesday 1 March
Scotland women
Scotland – Korea 6-5
Scotland men
Scotland – Korea 7-6
Scotland women
Scotland – Norway 6-7
Day Six – Thursday 2 March
Scotland men
Scotland – USA 6-2
Scotland women
Scotland – USA 8-7
Scotland men
Scotland – Norway 8-5
Day Seven – Friday 3 March
Women’s Semi Final 13.00 Scotland v Norway
Men’s Semi Final 18.00 Scotland v China
Day Eight – Saturday 4 March
Women’s Finals 08.00
Men’s Finals 13.00
Image: WCF/Alina Pavlyuchik & Stephen Fisher
