VERNON, B.C. -- Tears of joy. Tears of triumph. Tears of relief.
If there was any doubt about just how much Winnipeg's Jennifer Jones and the rest of her team want to win a world curling championship here today, it was written all over their tear-streaked faces Saturday afternoon.
After Saturday’s dramatic semifinal win, Jennifer Jones (right) high-fives lead Dawn Askin as third Cathy Overton-Clapham (centre) looks on.
In the kind of emotional display usually reserved for the aftermath of a major final, Jones and company instead let it all pour out following Saturday's semifinal, a heart-stopping come-from-behind 9-8 win over Japan's Moe Meguro.
They laughed. They cried. They embraced each other and then, later, they hugged family members over the boards.
They looked, in fact, every bit like a team that had just won a world title, rather than one that had just escaped with their playoff lives thanks to an opponent's last-rock miss.
It was a script familiar to followers of this Jones team. A last-rock miss by Ontario's Sherry Middaugh won them the Canadian semifinal, just as a last-rock miss by Alberta's Shannon Kleibrink won them the Canadian final.
This time it was Meguro's turn to wear the horns. Up 8-5 and having played spectacularly through eight ends, Meguro saw it all come apart when it counted the most. First, it was a deuce for Canada in the ninth end on a runback by Jones.
Then in the 10th, with Canada's clock down to just seconds, Jones socked a second Canada counter into the house with her last and left Meguro with a tough decision -- draw the four-foot for the win, but risk giving up a steal of two. Or play a runback double and worst-case only give up one.
Meguro took the less dangerous path, left behind a Canada counter and off we went to the extra end.
But the view didn't get any better for Japan, particularly after a pick on the second stone of Japanese third Mari Motohashi made what was already a bad situation for Japan even worse.
In the end, Meguro had nothing left but a very difficult draw to the four-foot with the last rock of the game and she wasn't even close. The rock crashed out front and a boisterous packed house erupted at having seen still another comeback from a Canada team that thrives on them.
It's a trait that makes this Jones team both fun and tortuous to watch. But if you were looking for apologies, you were looking in the wrong place.
"It's kind of deja vu all over, but we'll take it in this situation," said Canada third Cathy Overton-Clapham, calling it one of the best-played games in her hall of fame career.
"That," said Overton-Clapham, "was very well curled."
The first five ends, in particular, were spectacularly played, with Jones and Meguro each shooting 90 per cent and trading great shots one after the other, their teams in full support.
But a three-ender by Japan in the sixth, which put Canada down 6-3, once again proved to be the match Canada needed to light the fire even brighter.
It was at that point, lead Dawn Askin mused later, that her team started to do its "thing."
And what thing is that exactly -- this thing that seems to materialize for the Jones team almost exclusively when all seems lost? Askin doesn't seem sure.
"I don't know, it's just this thing we have," said Askin. "We talk about it -- it's just this thing where we're in our groove, we have draw weight, we feel good, we're just in our zone, I guess."
Overton-Clapham described it this way.
"We all stick together and we believe in each other and when it comes down to it, we just dig deep and everything comes together for us."
If they can make it happen once more today, a world of heartbreak that the women of this team have experienced on curling's world stage will suddenly seem a distant memory.
The recipe today, says the skip, is simple.
"We know what we have to do," said Jones. "We just have to do our thing. And if we do our thing, it should be OK."
There's that thing again.
paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
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