Jones finds her groove at Scotties, But Alberta, Northern Ontario still leading the way

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This article was published 23/02/2016 (3875 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. — The Scotties always flashes by so fast, Krista McCarville agreed, as if it slips from first draw to halfway over in a single blink.

For the Northern Ontario skip, the first half was a dream. Her Thunder Bay rink was the second-last unbeaten team in Grande Prairie, losing only to Alberta’s Chelsea Carey, and they even squeaked out a comeback victory against Jennifer Jones. They won two more games Tuesday, beating P.E.I. and Newfoundland to rise to 5-1.

“It’s unbelievable,” McCarville said after those games. “We come here on Thursday, and it’s such a long day that it feels like it’s two days. You’re hurrying up to wait, and then it flies by. It’s kind of sad that we’re already halfway through, but at the same time we want to get to the weekend, so that’s the exciting part.”

Now, as the fifth day of play dawns at Revolution Place, McCarville will have to hold tight to stay on course. Because there are 10 draws in the books at the 2016 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, and seven more left to play. The top four teams of the 12 contending will advance to the playoffs, and the standings are jammed and very much in flux.

In some ways, a lot happened here over the first four days. Some favourites struggled, while others surpassed expectations. A flu went around, not as bad as the gastroenteritis that ravaged the field in Montreal two years ago, but enough to see some exhausted players, and handshakes replaced by less-pestilent elbow-taps.

What we know, at the halfway mark: Carey is beatable (credit to Ontario’s Jenn Hanna, giant-killer, who beat her 7-5 Tuesday night), but still the runaway leader. Defending champion Jones is finding her groove, after unfortunate slips to start: she easily trounced New Brunswick and Saskatchewan Tuesday to jump to 4-2.

“We’re happy with how we’re playing right now, and hopefully pick it up tomorrow,” Jones said, after wrapping the 11-5 win over Saskatchewan. “We had not our best day in terms of a couple of sloppy shots here and there, but I feel like we’re getting a really good feel for the ice, and feel really good heading into tomorrow.”

Playoff race

Meanwhile, though Jolene Campbell’s Regina foursome may want to forget that rout, they are still deep in the playoff race at 4-3, and their game is heating up.

Through the first half, Saskatchewan third Ashley Howard was shooting 85 per cent and sitting neck and neck with Jones third Kaitlyn Lawes for top-shooting vice in the field; second Callan Hamon and Campbell were also near the top shotmakers at their position, until their numbers were dented by slews of misses against Jones.

All of this means that Kerri Einarson, the talented Manitoba skip making her first run at a Canadian championship, is suddenly facing a steep climb for her playoff life. With a punishing pair of Wednesday match-ups against Carey and McCarville, and a tilt against Jones Thursday, she will have to dig deep to survive.

Einarson is still in it, though. After losing a tough morning match to Quebec’s Marie-France Larouche, the Manitobans turned around at night to rise 8-5 over Newfoundland’s Stacie Curtis. That puts them at 3-3 on the week, still in the running for this thing — but they will have to beat the best.

“We came out solid as a team, and not just one or two of us,” Einarson said after the evening win. “So it as really good to come out and play like that, and know that’s how we need to play. We have two big games tomorrow and we have to come out and play like that.”

Perhaps the most rising second-half buzz belongs to McCarville, a 33-year-old in the renaissance of her career. This is her fifth Scotties appearance, though the first four were as Ontario champ before the northern part had its own berth. Her best showing came in her last run at it six years ago, when she finished third.

In 2013, McCarville stepped away from the ice. She was burned out, she explained Tuesday: between her work as a teacher and her two young children, the demands of nightly practices and weekends at the club were just too much. She did dabble a bit around the curling rinks, but stayed away from its competitive rungs.

Then last year, she went to watch the Northern Ontario final at her home Fort William Curling Club, where her friends Kendra Lilly and Sarah Potts were playing in the provincial final. McCarville felt the fire of the ice heating back up. “It was really tough watching,” she said. “I didn’t like it.”

It’s virtually the same story told by Quebec’s Marie-France Larouche, with the same outcome too: now, McCarville is back helming a team with Lilly at third, Ashley Sippala at second and Potts at lead. They exploded through the Northern Ontario championship, beating favoured Tracy Fleury three times.

Weeks later, they’re firmly in control of their own destiny at the Scotties, with a very real shot at the 1-vs-2 page playoff game on the line.

“We all know the level of play we want to play at,” McCarville said. “I think we’ve been achieving that, so that’s really important.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca