The Viterra Prairie Pinnacle, formerly the Saskatchewan Scotties Tournament of Hearts is the annual provincial women's curling championship for the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The winning team represents Saskatchewan at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the national women's championship. The bonspiel is organized by CURLSASK, the provincial curling association.
Format
The number of teams participating and the format of the tournament has varied over the years. In the most recent edition, in 2024, the bonspiel included 12 teams divided into two pools leading to a four-team page playoff.[1] Four teams qualified based on their national CTRS ranking; another four qualified based on their rank on the Saskatchewan Women's Curling Tour (SWCT); and the final four teams qualified via direct events, called the Women's Last Chance.[2]
Champions
The championship has been contested annually since 1948, with the event cancelled only once, in 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[3]
In 1953, the Janet Perkin rink from Regina won the provincial title and the Western Canadian Ladies' Championship, the first organized competition for women that went beyond the province's borders, and which was hosted in Regina.[4] Saskatoon's Joyce McKee established an early run of dominance in the province, winning a record eight titles between 1954 and 1973, including five as skip. McKee won the first invitational national title in 1960 and the first official Canadian women's championship the following year, capturing the 1961 Diamond D Championship.[5] She won another national title in 1969 before teaming up with Vera Pezer for a then-record three consecutive provincial and national titles from 1971 to 1973, including the 1972 Macdonald Lassies Championship in Saskatoon.[6] Pezer's three straight titles were part of a run of six straight for Team Saskatchewan. In 2019, the Pezer rink would be ranked fifth in a national ranking of the greatest women's curling teams.[7] The top-ranked team was Sandra Schmirler's Regina rink, which won three provincial, national, and world titles in the 1990s, along with a gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics.[7] Other Saskatchewan champions who went on to secure national titles include Dorenda Schoenhals, Emily Farnham, Marj Mitchell—whose rink also won Canada's first women's world championship in 1980[8]—and Amber Holland.[9] Sherry Anderson has won seven provincial titles, matching McKee's mark of five wins as a skip, with her first win coming in 1994 and her last in 2018.[10] Although Anderson has not won a national Tournament of Hearts, her rink did capture a record five straight Canadian senior championships between 2017 and 2022, and world seniors titles in 2018, 2019, and 2023.[11] The most recent provincial champion is Skylar Ackerman, whose rink won its first title at the 2024 Viterra Scotties.[12]
