Jones dominates at Scotties

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This article was published 17/02/2013 (4805 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KINGSTON, ONT. — Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones put on a dominating display here at the Canadian women’s curling championship on Sunday.

Jones dispatched longtime rival Kelly Scott of B.C. 10-4 in nine ends on the morning draw and then made even easier work of Newfoundland’s 2007 Canadian junior champion Stacie Devereaux on the afternoon draw, throttling the winless Newfoundlanders 9-1 in just seven ends.

Put it altogether and Manitoba will head into Monday with a 3-0 record and tied for first atop the standings with Ontario’s Rachel Homan, Team Canada’s Heather Nedohin and Saskatchewan’s Jill Shumay.

“I thought we had a great day today actually,” Jones said after the Newfoundland game. “Today, I thought we played quite well and it’s a good feeling going into tomorrow.”

Manitoba plays Nova Scotia’s Mary-Anne Arsenault (0-3) on the Monday afternoon draw and then NWT/Yukon’s Kerry Galusha (1-2) on the evening draw.

Jones made extremely short work of an obviously overmatched Newfoundland squad. After scoring a deuce in the second end with the hammer, Jones rattled off steals of 2, 3, 1 and 1 in successive ends to make the game 9-0 after just six ends. The Newfoundlanders finally scored a single with the hammer after the seventh end and offered handshakes.

“Nothing went their way today,” Jones said of Newfoundland, “and I feel bad when that happens to anyone.”

Earlier Sunday, Jones drew the four-foot with the final rock of the fifth end against B.C. to score 3 and open up a 6-2 lead on a Scott squad that has historically owned Jones at this event. B.C. conceded after nine ends.

The team shooting percentages tell the story of just how dominating the Jones squad has been through three games here this weekend. Manitoba’s 87 percent as a team is by far the best in the field. Ontario is a distant second at 81 percent, followed by Canada at 80 percent.

The two Manitoba routs Sunday allowed the squad the luxury of getting some ice time for fifth player Kristin MacCuish. MacCuish replaced lead Dawn Askin for the final two ends of the win over B.C. and then replaced her aunt, second Jill Officer, for the final end against Newfoundland.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Curling Association announced Sunday the Scotties Tournament of Hearts will return to Montreal in 2014 for the first time in 34 years.

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The event will be held Feb. 1-9, 2014 at the 4,750-seat Maurice Richard Arena. It will slightly overlap the Sochi Winter Games, which run Feb. 7-23.

The overlap means, among other things, that the winner here next Sunday would be unable to return as Team Canada in Montreal if the same team were to win the Canadian Curling Trials at the MTS Centre next December and go on to represent Canada in Sochi.

If that conflict were to happen, the CCA has not yet decided who would compete in Montreal in 2014 as Team Canada.

In the last Olympic cycle — in which there was also a scheduling conflict between the two events — the decision was that the runner-up of the previous year’s Scotties would become Team Canada if the reigning national champion also won the Trials, which they didn’t.

But this time around, there is some thought being given to a scenario where the leading team on the Canadian team ranking system next winter would go to Montreal as Team Canada if the need arises. A final decision on what to do in the event of a conflict won’t be made until later this year.