Jones into the final with emphatic semifinal win over Russia

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This article was published 21/03/2015 (4045 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAPPORO, Japan – Of all the shots that Jennifer Jones made while fighting to survive, to keep her quest for her second world championship alive, the one she liked best happened in the very first end.

That double takeout wasn’t, strictly speaking, the shot that won Team Canada the Saturday semifinal against Russia’s Anna Sidorova. But it was the one that would put them on the road to win, a relatively steady march that continued until Russia proffered their hands, with the score standing at 7-4 after the ninth end.

“I just thought, we had that fire, that determination that we get when our backs are against the wall,” Jones said, as a passel of Japanese fans leaned over the rail at Tsukisamu Gymnasium to snap her photo. “We just weren’t going to let this slip through our hands without a fight.”

Now, Jones and her team will rest and get ready for the final, a rematch of the 1 vs. 2 page playoff game: Team Canada versus Team Switzerland’s young hotshots. It’ll kick off at 1 a.m. on Sunday morning Winnipeg time. (That’s 3 p.m. in Japan.) Set your clocks.

The semifinal win was important for Jones’ rink, and not just for the obvious reason. It was how they won it that mattered, especially after Saturday morning’s disappointing performance in the page. In that game, the Canadians came out flat, fought the inch for 10 limp ends, and lost.

Against Russia, the situation was reversed. In front of a healthy and attentive crowd, the Canadians came out hot and made some laser beams of early shots, while Sidorova struggled hard. By the end of the fourth, Jones was holding a 5-1 lead and shooting at 100 per cent, while the Russian skip was lagging at only 55 per cent.

Everything was different, when everything was on the line. Jones thought she played exhausted in the morning page, after a light sleep; so they had a nap between the games, and came back rested. Even the team’s body language was a little different: they looked looser, more assertive on the ice.

“We were,” third Kaitlyn Lawes agreed. “We wanted this game… we always say it doesn’t hurt to play an extra game in the playoffs because the ice tends to change, and we really wanted to be playing in that gold medal game. So we were fired up, and we had a lot of energy. We were rested and excited to play.”

And it showed, starting with that hammer Jones threw in the first end.

The skip would go on to make a slew of pretty doubles just like it. And yet, of all the shots she made and all the yellow Russian rocks she knocked safely out of play, that throw would stand as her favourite.

“We were chasing all end, and then we managed to get our two in the first end, and I think that that set a tone,” Jones said, minutes after the win. “We weren’t able to score two points this morning, and it just kind of gave us that little bit of a lift, and we just carried on from there.”

In those early frames, the Canadians made a bundle of pretty plays. Lawes made two beautiful shots in the second end – a perfect freeze, a sleek takeout – to put the Russians on the edge. Canada eventually collected a single-point steal there, when both of Sidorova’s shots flopped.

In the third end, Lawes threw fire again, a glorious runback double that would help pave the way for Canada to collect another deuce, and that dominant 5-1 lead.

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The game continued much the same. Jones finally whiffed on her first shot of the fifth, but she made up for it on her next rock, a perfect hit-and-roll double that cleared Sidorova’s rocks from the house, and the Russian skip had to blank, hoping to make up the difference in the second half of the game.

It never happened. Though Sidorova found a deuce in the sixth end, Jones kept pace with a single and then a steal in eight. And though many observers already thought the game seemed all but over, that was when Lawes finally felt they had the game locked up.

“At that point, it was getting later in the game, and stealing one in eight was huge,” she said. “We were okay with that.”

The final shotmaking stats: Jones (who made a few more misses in the latter half of the game) finished at a robust 86 per cent; Lawes at a sterling 89 per cent; second Jill Officer at 82 per cent and lead Dawn McEwen at a firm 90 per cent. All told, it was easily one of their strongest showings of the week.

Melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

Every piece of reporting Melissa produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.