Currie curler, Caitlin Barr, heads for next month’s World Junior Curling Championships in Flims, Switzerland (March 6-14) having helped team Gray to victory in the Scottish Junior Championships at Aberdeen yesterday (Sun 7 Feb).

Nineteen year old Barr has been to a World Junior Championships before but only in the stands as a supporter to older sister, Kerry, who helped Scotland win the gold medal in 2008. Led by Eve Muirhead, Scotland also won the title in 2007 and 2009.

“It’s still a bit unreal to win because before today I have always lost on the Sunday,” said Caitlin last night. “In 2008 I lost to Kerry in the final and I’ve been to the semi finals twice before. So to put on the Scotland top at last for the prize giving was a big wow for me.”

Caitlin was playing with skip Lauren Gray (Balfron), Claire McDonald (Inverness) and Tasha Aitken (Longniddry). In Sunday’s semi finals they beat Lockerbie’s Helen King 6-1 before following up with a 6-3 win in final over Murrayfield’s Jennifer Dodds.

“I’ve played with Lauren Gray for six years but for the rest of us this is our first year of playing together,” said Caitlin. “We’ve been progressively getting better this year and we knew we were probably ranked third going into the tournament. Before Christmas, in two main junior tournaments, we came second at Inverness and first at Lockerbie and the top teams were playing in both.

“We play together as a team really well and we were hoping to win and thought we had a good chance, so it was good to come through.”

Caitlin is enjoying her third season of support from the East of Scotland Institute of Sport, part of the sportscotland institute of sport’s regional network which provides high performance expertise to Scotland’s potential world class talent.

“I’ve been in competition for the last two weeks solid, with the Scottish Ladies the week before last, so the ESIS support has helped me get in the shape I need to be in,” she said. “They provide weekly one to one coaching on ice and Strength & Conditioning and physio support. It makes a huge difference.”

Caitlin has three weeks of training to look forward to before heading to Switzerland for the World Championships. With Scotland having won the gold medal for the past three years she admits there is a level of expectation.

“It’s a bit of pressure to think what we have to live up to but it’s good,” she said. “Anna Sloan, who was in the winning Scotland team last year, was skip this week and we managed to beat her. So we should do well when we get to the Worlds.”