Mighty Manitoba morning

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This article was published 21/02/2020 (2258 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MOOSE JAW, Sask. — There are still four games left to be played at the 2020 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. Still a horizon scattered with heartbreaks and triumphs, still a whole lot of rocks. Yet this much we know for sure: there will be a Manitoba team in the Canadian women’s curling championship final. 

In the black and gold buffalo jackets of a Manitoba champion, there is Team Kerri Einarson. In wild-card teal, there’s Team Jennifer Jones. Tonight, the two will meet for the second time at Mosaic Place, this time in the prized 1-vs-2 Page playoff game. One will earn a bye to Sunday’s final; the other will battle on. 

Sound familiar? It should, just with the jackets reversed. In 2018, the first year of a national format that included a wild-card berth, it was Jones who won the buffalo jacket and Einarson (with a different team) who clawed her way onto the draw as the wild card. They met in the 1-vs-2 that time, too — and met again in the final. 

That all-Manitoba final could well happen again. Stay tuned. 

First, rounding out the playoffs, Ontario’s Rachel Homan will face Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville in the 3-vs-4 Page game at 1 p.m. today. The winner of that one will meet the loser of the Manitoba-Team Wild Card game in the Sunday morning semifinal. 

What a week it has been. Even before Jones faced McCarville on Friday night — it ended up an 11-6 loss — she and her foursome of Kaitlyn Lawes, Jocelyn Peterman and Dawn McEwen had already clinched the top Page game on the back of their cumulative record, head-to-head results and pre-game draws to the button.  

Now, Jones is just two wins away from what would be a record seventh Canadian title. 

As for Einarson, she and her Manitoba champion rink of Val Sweeting, Shannon Birchard and Brianne Meilleur rebounded from the Friday afternoon battle of Manitoba — a rare flop by the otherwise superb Einarson crew, an eight-end, 12-7 trouncing by Jones — to down Homan 9-6 in a brilliant performance. 

As the top finisher on the standings, Einarson will take the first hammer. tonight against Jones. 

“It feels great,” Einarson said, moments after the win, in which she shot a stellar 94 per cent. “We’ve worked really hard all week, and really battled, and I’m super proud of my teammates. If it wasn’t for them… they make my job look easy.” 

Whatever happens in the home stretch of these Scotties, there’s already a winner here and it’s Manitoba. The province as a whole, we mean, and it’s not just here in Moose Jaw. This was the week that Manitoba talent was spotlighted across the curling world. 

Think about it. On Friday, two Manitoba teams clinched the 1-vs-2 game. On the same day and half a planet away, two Manitoba-based teams advanced into the world junior finals, as Canadian champions Jacques Gauthier and Mackenzie Zacharias advanced to their gold-medal games in Siberia. 

If there was a symmetry in the success, it was even a little poetic. Altona-based skip Zacharias beat Russia in her semifinal partly on the back of a sleek in-off to score three that couldn’t help but remind of a certain famous Jones shot. Yes, the Wild Card skip saw the video: “good job,” Jones said of the shot, with a grin. 

This explosion of success matters, and not only for bragging rights. Between this Scotties, and the world juniors, curling fans are seeing a full story of what is raising up Manitoba curling: its past, its present, and now its future. 

Eleven years ago, Jones vice Lawes had stood where Gauthier and Zacharias were standing, skipping her own Team Canada to a world junior final. She lost that one in Vancouver, falling to Scotland’s Eve Muirhead; in the moment, the loss “sucked,” she said with a laugh, but just getting that far would prove pivotal. 

“It was devastating, but it helped set me up for my women’s career,” she said. “Because of that success, I was able to get on a very competitive women’s team right out of juniors, and that helped immensely. It made you realize it was just a game… you learn a lot from those big losses, and I’m grateful for that experience.”

When Jones sees that sort of rising talent making waves on the world stage, she is reminded of her father, Larry Jones, who died last spring. He started coaching her when she was a youngster, an experience that inspired him to spend the rest of his life helping to build junior programs and guide up-and-coming players. 

“It always makes me think of my dad, to be honest, because he always said that if junior curling was doing well, then curling was doing well in the province,” Jones said. “And our junior curling is doing amazing and has been for quite some time now. You see those stars keep playing and it’s great to see. 

“It’s great to see that when we retire there’s kind of a next wave of tremendous players to represent our province.”

Given the way Jones rose to the occasion this week, let’s pause the retirement talk for a little while. 

Team Wild Card’s ride through this Scotties has been a journey, right from the emotional do-or-die win last Friday over Team Tracy Fleury just to make the main draw. The next day, Jones, Lawes, second Jocelyn Peterman and Dawn McEwen lost their first game to Rachel Homan, but they won the next nine straight.  

Some of those wins were nailbiters and sometimes they got a little lucky. But through most of the championship round they were wrecking balls, quickly dispatching Team Canada’s Chelsea Carey, Saskatchewan’s Robyn Silvernagle and Einarson, winning each by walloping scores in eight ends apiece. 

“Looking at the big picture, I’m so excited to see where we’ve come from our first year together (with Peterman, who joined in 2018),” Lawes said. “Now we’re heading into playoffs, which is a huge goal for us, and we’re really excited with how we’re playing.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca