Eight of the best young male and female curling teams are in North Bay this week competing in the provincial championship.
Teams from North Bay, Timmins, Sudbury, Cochrane, Thunder Bay and other northern cities are in town.
"We love curling together, it will be fun playing at our first big event like this," said Team Chilton skip Deanna Chilton, from Timmins.
"It will be fun meeting new people, new faces and even meeting some old faces from the past events."
This is the first normal tournament of this calibre in more than two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Tournament organizers told CTV News there's a sense of excitement in the arena.
"Some of these athletes are aging out this year, all these athletes are under the age of 18," said tournament coordinator Laura Forget.
"Some of them, this will be their last year of being able to compete at this level."
"Some of them are very young -- we have an 11-year-old skip from Thunder Bay on the boys side. Some of them, this is their first big event, because of COVID they missed two years and this is their first time competing in a provincial," Forget added.
The girls side of the tournament starts Wednesday night while the boys starts Thursday.
The top two seeds from each side will go on to nationals later this month in Timmins.
