Hurrying hard halfway home through

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This article was published 18/02/2015 (4110 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MOOSE JAW, Sask. — If a single image could capture what it means to be the best curlers in Canada, it arrived in a nearly vacant arena, on a sheet of quiet ice.

It was not a jubilant scene, and there was no victory cry. Nah, this was just a practice at the 2015 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, very late on Monday night.

The cameras were gone by then. The swollen crowds were, too. They’d spilled out of Mosaic Place as soon as Jennifer Jones and her Team Manitoba eked out a razor-thin 8-7 win over the sharpshooters of Rachel Homan’s two-time defending Canadian champion rink. Moose Jaw fans are hungry for curling, and they left full and satisfied.

“In that game, the two titans showed why they are the best,” one Scotties volunteer declared the next morning, on his drive to the arena.

It was a thrilling tilt, tense like a tightrope walk and emotionally exhausting. Still, in the moments after Jones won, her post-game routine ticked along like clockwork. She shook hands with her opponent, she stowed her brush, she rushed backstage to rattle off one minute and 42 seconds of a media scrum.

“Sorry guys, I know you’re on deadline,” she said upon arrival, as a gaggle of frazzled-looking reporters circled her like bees to a golden flower.

Then, as they typed frantically and the clock closed in on 11 p.m., Jones third Kaitlyn Lawes, second Jill Officer and lead Dawn McEwen returned to the sheet.

Yeah, that’s right. Not more than 10 minutes after besting Team Homan, it was practice time for Manitoba. “We’re perfectionists, yep,” Jones said on Tuesday afternoon, with a laugh. “We always want to be as good as we can be, and as good as we can be for each other.”

That scene, that was what being the best really means. That’s what it takes to make it to the top, and stay there, and stave off a post-Olympic complacency.

Look, at the halfway point of the round robin at this Canadian women’s curling championship, it’s clear enough the Jones foursome has not fallen into that trap. They cruised through the Manitoba playdowns in Winkler, and through six games in Moose Jaw it’s obvious that here, they’re finding yet another gear.

Frankly, they’re killing it. Sure, there have been misses, but some magnificent strategy too — particularly in that game against Homan, where Jones had to recover from a ninth-end stumble by scheming up a way to stop Team Canada from scoring a game-winning 10th-end deuce. After six unbeaten games, all four of the Manitobans are shooting at rates right among the top of the pack. No obvious weaknesses, just a smattering of shots they’d like to take back.

“We feel like we’re playing fairly well, but we can get better, which is what you want at this stage of the week,” Jones said, before taking a night off on Tuesday. “We don’t want to be peaking now. We want to eliminate some of those misses, and try to be a little bit sharper going forward.”

Sometimes, the toughest competition seems to be the one they wage against themselves. Jones thought they played a little messy in their lone Tuesday match, an afternoon game against Quebec first-timer Lauren Mann. Manitoba still ran away with it 9-3, after playing out the requisite eight ends.

“I myself struggled with my speed a little bit,” said McEwen, who shot 82 per cent against Quebec — in most of the previous games, she was at 90 or above. “If I don’t start off well for the girls, then there’s a little bit of chasing going on. I’ll just regroup for the next game, and get back to where I need to be.”

Truthfully? The sheer dominance of the top teams makes for tough storytelling at these Scotties. The field is so rigidly stratified, the top competitors so fully known. There is Homan, there is Jones. There is also Alberta’s Val Sweeting, the 2014 Scotties finalist, who still gets somewhat overshadowed by the light streaming off the more accomplished stars. But she’s beaten both on the curling tour this year, and could certainly take a run at the Canadian jacket.

Below those heavyweights, the depth drops off sharply. Jumbled together in the middle of the field is a tier made up of Saskatchewan favourite Stefanie Lawton, who is a cut above, as well as teams such as Ontario’s Julie Hastings and Northern Ontario’s Tracy Horgan, who could be dark horses to push for a final playoff spot.

Then there are the teams languishing in the bottom third of the standings. None of them lack for spirit or good humour, and many of them show plenty of raw talent. But they arrive at the Scotties at a deep disadvantage, lacking the experience won only through elite competition, and even a crucial feel for arena ice.

Ontario’s Hastings, for instance, has only played on arena ice a handful of times, though her longtime foursome has been pushing to get more exposure. Some curlers here don’t even have that much. “You know, it’s almost turning into two-tier competitions now,” said Mann, who fell to 1-5 with Tuesday’s loss to Manitoba.

“Most of these teams, the Jen Jones, the Rachel Homans, the Val Sweetings, kind of all play each other in the same events. Unless you have the money to fly to them, which in Quebec we definitely don’t, we don’t get to play against them a whole lot.”

The great parity gap is a perennial discussion topic around the Scotties, something that gets written about often, though rarely frankly enough. There are many factors at play, most of which are better suited for another article, on another day. There’s the role of the provincial curling associations, for instance. There’s the way the success of the grand slam circuit has helped lift elite teams to nearly heroic heights.

So this, perhaps, is just a sign of curling’s transitional phase, as the top end of the game evolves away from the convivial atmosphere of the clubs, and towards the bright lights and intense commitment demanded by national TV. For instance, when Heather Strong won her first Newfoundland championship in 1998 — she’s on her 12th, now — the curling wasn’t as sharp, she thought, but the camaraderie was booming.

“Oh my gosh, do you got 20 minutes?” Strong laughed, when asked how the Scotties had changed in her years. “With higher stakes, I guess, comes a bigger investment in time, and when you’re investing a lot in the sport you need to make sure every T is crossed and I is dotted. I don’t blame the teams that are doing that this week, but there’s no getting around the fact that’s a change.

“Do I like it personally?” the 38-year-old skip mused. “I like the good old days, but I’m old-fashioned. Frankly, I just don’t want to invest that much of my life into it, at this age and with all the cards kind of stacked against me… So we do the best we can with what we’ve got.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca