Scotland's Tia Laurie and Ethan Brewster perfectly finalised their preparations for the forthcoming Booster Juice World Junior Mixed Doubles Championships by winning the World Open Under-25 Mixed Doubles Championships in the Saville Community Sports Centre in Edmonton, Alberta just days before the World Juniors get underway at the same venue.
Preparing for what will be their World Juniors Mixed Doubles debut, the pair who both won gold medals at the Olympic Youth Games in 2024, beat local pair Serena Gray-Withers and Victor Pietrangelo 8-3 in the final to claim victory in their first taste of competitive action in Canada.
“The World U25 Champs was a great event with a strong field and we felt it was ideal preparation for the week ahead," said Laurie. 
"The final was actually a really great game in which Ethan and I played really well and we used everything we had learnt in the build-up to help us to this success."
Having clearly revelled in the conditions, just as they did when representing Team GB at the Youth Olympics, the 20-year-old and her 19-year-old playing partner are now looking forward to the same and more in the coming week.
"The Saville Centre here is a great venue, the environment is amazing and we especially loved having family supporters in the stands out to watch," she said.
“We both love playing in these environments and having family support out here with us definitely makes the atmosphere even better.
"It was a great event to build on and to prepare us well for our Worlds debut this week.
"The Youth Olympics helped us to gain experience playing on the international stage and playing for our country and we know there will be even more family and friends out here to watch when the competition gets underway again this week, which we are both delighted about.
"I am very excited to be making my world debut this week and we are both delighted to be playing for Scotland, so this event has definitely helped us in our preparations for the World Juniors and getting to play and also practice on the same ice has been great and so useful for us."
“The amount of work we have put in since winning the Scottish Junior Mixed Doubles is really starting to show and we always go back to everything we have learned in training which has helped us in every one of our games." 
The victory against a field which contained a number of more experienced pairings, was all the more useful because the opposition included some of those they will meet at the World Juniors.
"A few other teams out here have also used this as preparation for the World Juniors and we will play a few of those countries, but we just have to focus on taking it a game at a time and also what we have learned from last week and bring it into this event," Laurie noted, however.
“Our first day tomorrow is a one game day against Australia and we know the field we will be facing this week will be strong, but so was the field last week, so we just need to take that forward and build on that success and those learnings, knowing that we have a great teamwork between athletes and our coach.”
A field of 31 teams is competing in the event from May 5-10, split into four pools with the top two in each pool progressing to the quarter-finals.
Along with Australia, who were among those other teams competing in the World Open Under-25s and whom they take on at 11pm BST on the opening day, the Scots will also face Kenya, Korea, China, France, the Philippines and Austria in the round-robin stages.
Follow the results here
Watch LIVE streamed games on the Curling Stadium Edmonton YouTube Channel
