One local athlete was able to come home with a medal from the 2019 Canada Winter Games in Red Deer over the past two weeks.

Moose Jaw's Raine Eberl, along with partner Caidence Derenisky out of Regina, won silver in Novice Pairs Figure Skating on Thursday at the Games.

"It feels pretty good, we've been training pretty hard all year and to have it pay off finally, it feels awesome," said Eberl.

The Saskatchewan pair sat in third place after posting a score of 36.71 during the short program last Tuesday. After a day off, Eberl and Derenisky went out and put together a stellar skate in their free program, scoring 66.87, to move up in the silver spot.

Quebec captured gold with a final score of 110.25, while Eberl and Derenisky were just behind at 103.58.

Eberl said that they were able to skate loose during the free program and that helped propel them into the silver medal.

"We didn't have a whole lot of pressure on us because we had already made it to Canada Games, so we didn't really have anywhere to go but up and we laid it all out there in the free program, skated clean and that bumped us up to second," he said.

Eberl and Derenisky were a new team to start the season and they have grown together over the course of the season to get to this point.

All the work that they put in during the past few months ended up paying off, according to Eberl.

"We knew that we had put the training in, so it was just a matter of trusting our training and just skating how we had been skating for the past few months," he said.

"I have to thank our coaches, they're the ones that got us here, but it's been awesome to be a new team and come in and make a dent in the skating world."

The pair also connected well on and off the ice, which Eberl said played a big part in their success.

"We're both pretty easy-going and adaptable, so if something comes up and we have to change something on the fly, we can do that," he said. "Caidence is just a lot of fun to be around, she has a great personality, so she’s an awesome partner."

The next step for the team will be moving up a level to the junior division and that will present a new set of challenges, which Eberl added that they're ready to attack head-on.

"This is a really good confidence booster for us, we know where we sit in the nation and that will help us going forward," he said.

Moose Jaw's Ryann Handley came in 10th in the Novice Female Singles division at the Games, posting a final score of 83.10.

Team Ackerman Falls in Quarterfinals

The Skylar Ackerman rink out of Moose Jaw put together a great run in Female Curling at the Canada Winter Games, making it into the playoff round before falling 6-4 to Nova Scotia in the quarterfinals on Friday.

Saskatchewan went 6-4 during the round robin to finish in fifth place heading into the playoffs.

The quarter-final saw Saskatchewan fall behind 3-0 after giving up a steal of one to Nova Scotia in each of the third and fourth ends. Saskatchewan answered with three in the fifth to tie the game, but Nova Scotia came right back with a single in the sixth and a steal of two in the seventh to take back control.

Ackerman and company scored one in the eighth to finish off the loss.

Nova Scotia went on to win bronze, beating New Brunswick in the third-place game on Saturday, while Ontario knocked off Manitoba, 8-3, in the gold medal game.