Team Carson have won the Scottish Men’s Junior Championship for the third successive year, but only after being pushed to the limit in a fiercely contested final.
The all-teenage quartet from Dumfries of Orrin Carson, younger brother Logan, Archie Hyslop and Charlie Gibb had gone undefeated through the round-robin stages of this year’s event at Curl Aberdeen before defeating Moray’s Team Rankin 9-2 in the semi-final.
That earned them a re-match in the final with the Perth rink led by Arran Thomson who, like Orrin Carson, has been selected to represent GB Students at the forthcoming World University Games and who had finished second in the round-robin before defeating Aberdeen’s Team Brewster in the semi-final.
Just as they had been in the first encounter, Team Carson found themselves three down in the course of the match.
However, this time around they were under that pressure much later in the game, trailing 5-2 with just two ends to play, forcing them to pull off an extraordinary comeback as they scored a three at the penultimate end to level the scores, before registering a steal at the last to take the win 6-5. 
“That was very special and one that we will never forget,” the older Carson said afterwards.
“We had played them in the first game of the round robin and started slow in that game and managed to claw our way back into it, but when it comes to the final you are always going to throw everything at it and that's what we did.
“They played exceptionally well throughout the first eight ends and finally they gave us a chance to get in and we took it and generated a good three going up the ninth and managed to play a perfect 10th end to get over the line.
“We never gave up and kept fighting until the last shot.”
The result takes them into an elite band of curlers who have won the Scottish Junior title on three occasions, the last skip to do so, Kyle Smith, having subsequently gone on to represent Team GB at the 2018 Olympics and while he believes that his rink can go on to set a new record of successive wins, Carson admitted that they are not finding it any easier as time goes by.
“It means a lot to us as a team to go three in a row and next year we will be back for four,” he said.
“It was great to go undefeated, too and this gives us huge confidence going into future championships, but this year was a lot tougher as you had to play a semi-final on the last day, which makes it a very long day compared to previous years.”
The women’s final was meanwhile contested by teams skipped by two players, Forfar’s Callie Soutar and Tia Laurie from Dumfries, who had won gold medals for Team GB at the Youth Olympic Games earlier this year and had finished in the top two spots after the round-robin stages with just one loss apiece.
Soutar, Eva Hare, Holly Clemie and Alison Hamilton had beaten another Dumfries quartet, Team Leigh 8-2 in the semi-finals, while Team Laurie had beaten Perth’s Team Watt 10-4 at that stage, but the final was a much tighter affair, with the teams tied at 4-4 after seven ends before the Forfar line-up registered a crucial two at the eighth, going on to win 7-5 after singles were exchanged at the last two ends.
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