Ontario advances to semifinal at Scotties

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This article was published 26/02/2011 (5333 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHARLOTTETOWN — Ontario’s Rachel Homan is two wins away from adding a Canadian women’s curling championship to the Canadian junior title she won last year.

Homan, 21, made a triple takeout to ultimately score five in the fifth end here at the Canadian womens curling championship Saturday afternoon in what proved to be the decisive end of a 13-5 romp over Nova Scotia’s Heather Smith-Dacey in the page playoff 3 vs 4 game.

With the victory, Homan now advances to face Saskatchewan’s Amber Holland in the semi-final this afternoon (TSN, 3 p.m.). The winner of the semi-final, in turn, advances to face Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones in Sunday evening’s Canadian womens final (TSN, 5:30 p.m.).

Homan, who has stood out here this week with her team’s ability to accurately play big-weight shots, couldn’t get to the other end of the ice fast enough when the triple came into play as Smith-Dacey’s rock came to a rest.

“As soon as it stopped,” smiled Homan, “we were running down to the hack…The heart rate was up there, for sure.”

Oops, said Smith Dacey. “It was just one bad end,” said Smith-Dacey. “But that’s the thing when you have the up-weight shot — she’s looking for it all the time…And we let them play it too much today.”

Holland finished first in the round-robin at 9-2, but Saskatchewan will head into the semi-final against Ontario having lost three of their last four games, including Friday’s night’s page playoff 1-2 game by a score of 10-9 to Canada.