As the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts wraps up this weekend in Thunder Bay, the tournament had some Sault Ste. Marie flavour.
Team Inglis, which represented Ontario in the annual women’s national championship, included Steve Acorn, a Sault resident, as its coach.
It wasn’t Acorn’s first foray into coaching at the national championship as the 52-year-old was also part of the event a year ago as coach of the Inglis rink.
The team, skipped by Danielle Inglis and curling out of the Ottawa area, went 6-2 in round robin play to finish third in Pool B and advance to the playoff round. A total of six teams in the 18-team field advanced to the playoff round.
The Inglis rink fell to Kayla Skrlik’s Alberta-based rink by a 9-8 score Friday night, which eliminated the Ontario team from the tournament, but it wasn’t without some drama.
After Skrlik scored three in the eighth end to take a 9-4 lead, Inglis scored a pair in the ninth end to cut the lead to 9-6 before stealing a pair in the 10th end to make the game even closer.
A 12-year coach, Acorn is no stranger to local curling as he currently is a coach at Algoma University and has also coached in national events with various teams.
In 2021, Acorn was coach of Team Northern Ontario at the World Junior Qualifier in Saskatoon where the team won gold after posting a 6-1 record.
Acorn coached Team Northern Ontario at the Canadian U20s in both 2020 and 2022 while also coaching Team Northern Ontario to gold at the 2017 U18 event.
Originally from Kapuskasing, Acorn is currently a local supervisor with the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry.