Jones, Einarson fall short of ultimate goal, but life is good

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This article was published 28/02/2016 (3819 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

GRANDE PRAIRIE, Alta. — When the Scotties bronze was won, Jennifer Jones strode over to the stands and reached out to take her daughter, Isabella, in her hands.

Then, she carried the wide-eyed toddler over to the media scrum, and spoke about balance.

“It’s not the end of the world when you lose,” Jones said.

 A few hours after this exchange, Revolution Place would roar again, as fans crammed in to watch Alberta champ and Manitoba daughter Chelsea Carey be crowned the new Canadian women’s curling champion.

She claimed it in an evening thriller, a 7-6 victory over tenacious Northern Ontario skip Krista McCarville that went right to the wire. McCarville was magnificent in the final, and as she has forced all of her opponents to do, it had to be won on the very last rock.

But in that long exhale after the third-place game, after Jones downed Manitoba’s Kerri Einarson 8-7, the arena was quiet. Jones, second Jill Officer and lead Dawn McEwen embraced their young daughters. A string of fans waited to collect autographs, and for the most part, the loudest sound was laughter.

For Manitoba’s two main hopes, it was over. Though it was “nice to end on a win,” Jones gamely said, she also conceded it didn’t make the sting of Saturday’s stunner semifinal loss any better. Which is fine, because she and her teammates are gunning for the 2018 Olympics anyway and besides, this is what they signed up for.

“If you were guaranteed to win, it wouldn’t be any fun,” Jones said, brightly. “That’s what sport is all about, that anybody can win on any given day.”

So Jones won on the last Sunday in Grande Prairie, while Einarson didn’t. The East St. Paul skip might have liked to come away from her rookie Scotties with a token of the visit, but finished fourth. (Her squad will get a parting gift of $16,900 of prize, sponsorship and athlete development money, so that’s something at least.)

Almost as long as she’s been a curler, Einarson has savoured hitting. The most electric moment of her Scotties, and the one she cited Sunday as her favourite, was just such an attack. It was the last throw of her round robin, a stone-cold double through a port barely wider than the granite. It clinched her playoff berth.

Yet Einarson’s debut Scotties ended not with a shout of a throw, but with a lovely whisper. The last rock she threw at Revolution Place was a magnificent draw, and clever. It forced Jones to deliver one better, and the Olympic champion nearly didn’t. It took McEwen, Officer and third Kaitlyn Lawes sweeping furiously in concert to win it.

That shot, the good-night kiss of her Scotties, “felt good,” Einarson said. “I definitely took a deep breath going down there. Smelled the ice, smelled the atmosphere, and just took it all in since it was my last time on that ice.”

Now, Jones and Einarson and everyone else that came and battled and eventually stopped short, will go home to figure out how they can get back, and get better.

Oh, there will be so much to remember from this unexpected and occasionally heart-stopping Scotties. There was the rise of so many rookies, from Einarson’s crew of Selena Kaatz, Liz Fyfe and Kristin MacCuish to Saskatchewan third Ashley Howard, who was a second-team all-star and a confident presence on her young green machine.

There were some shocks of off-ice excitement. There was the kerfuffle over the fact Scotties organizers asked some competing mothers to take their babies down the block to nurse. That got sorted out before the Free Press edition that broke the story even hit the streets. Smart money says it won’t be a problem again.

Above all, there was the distinct sense of something stirring underneath the surface of women’s curling, something fresh and deliciously appealing.

Even before the first draw, the buzz was this was a Scotties where it felt like anything could happen. The Rachel Homan Show that was the first half of the elite season suddenly evaporated in a veritable earthquake in Brampton, Ont., and the familiar dominoes kept falling: Sweeting. Lawton. Gone.

For a time in Grande Prairie, as Carey soared and Jones found her familiar pace, it seemed like that story might fade. Thanks to Einarson’s killer playoff-clinching hit, the final four played out mostly as predicted. What happened to them once they reached the playoffs, though, that part very few might have guessed.

So what happens next? Jones falls back into the Manitoba Scotties in 2017, when it’ll be held in Winnipeg. When she won the province in 2015, it felt anticlimactic, though Einarson gave her a fine battle in that final. But after the roller-coaster of this season, the future looms a bigger and exciting question.

But that’s a year away. For now, the picture slides back to Revolution Place, and focuses on the stands where Stephanie Lewis watched the bronze-medal game unfold.

She’d travelled from New Brunswick for this Scotties, and on the ultimate day she paid a makeup artist to paint her face in an intricate design that included her province’s flag, the Scotties logo, and a vine of roses. The roses were for her mother, Barbara York, who died of cancer four years ago.

They were curlers and fans together, mother and daughter, and used to go to bonspiels and cheer on their favourite curlers. Lewis never went to a Scotties, though. So Sunday, she took her place in the lavender seats of the arena, and raised a sign that could be read clear across the arena: “Scotties 2016: This One’s For You Mama.”

Did she find what she came for? “Oh yes, and more,” Lewis said, and beamed. “This is just something meaningful. If my mom was alive, she would be here beside me.”

It’s not the end of the world if you don’t win, Jones said. There are bigger things in life than curling, even at the top of it all.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca