Jones advances to championship round Veteran skip believes Team Manitoba has what it takes to triumph at Scotties By: Taylor Allen Posted: 6:00 PM CST Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023

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This article was published 22/02/2023 (975 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KAMLOOPS — Manitobans are running the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

Team Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones earned a massive victory Wednesday morning to lock up a spot in Friday’s championship round in Kamloops. Jones, now 6-1, outlasted Wild Card no. 2 Casey Scheidegger 7-6 with a steal in the extra end.

Jones plays her final round-robin game Thursday against New Brunswick’s Andrea Kelly.

“We knew we had to win one of our final two at least, so to be able to win that one and feel better going into tomorrow is really nice,” said second Mackenzie Zacharias.

“It helps with our confidence and I’m just really excited to see what happens in the playoffs. We kind of didn’t have the momentum in the first half and we knew we all had to pick it up after fifth end, but Jen made a couple pistols out there when we really needed them.”

When the dust settles, Jones will likely have to settle for being the second-ranked team in Pool B as her lone loss came to Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville. McCarville was 6-1 heading into Wednesday night’s late draw against Newfoundland and Labrador’s Stacie Curtis and owns the head-to-head tiebreaker with Jones.

“I think we’re almost there. We just have a couple of sloppy ends so if we can just get away from those, we’re feeling pretty good”–Team Manitoba skip Jennifer Jones

Gimli’s Kerri Einarson, who had the day off Wednesday at the Canadian women’s curling championships, tops Pool A with a perfect 6-0 record.

Ontario’s Rachel Homan is 4-2 and in third place in Pool B after beating Wild Card no. 3 Meghan Walter 9-5 Wednesday morning.

The second- and third-ranked teams in the two nine-team pools crossover to play in a Page playoff qualifying game Friday afternoon. The winners advance to the Page playoff seeding games on Friday night to play the top-ranked teams in each pool.

Regardless of where Jones ends up, she’s seen enough from third Karlee Burgess, Zacharias, and alternating leads Lauren Lenentine and Emily Zacharias to believe they have what it takes to win it all.

“I think we’re almost there. We just have a couple of sloppy ends so if we can just get away from those, we’re feeling pretty good,” said Jones.

This is the third Scotties for the Zacharias sisters, Burgess and Lenentine — the 2020 world junior curling champions — but this is their first time advancing to the playoffs. Their best finish came last year when they lost a tiebreaker to Kerry Galusha of the Northwest Territories.

“They’re ready. They have experience and that’s the best part about them. They have experience in juniors, they’ve played in a couple of Scotties where there wasn’t a crowd, but they’ve played in big games and they know what it takes,” said Jones. “As much as they’re young, they still have experience, it’s just I have a little bit more so I’m trying to shed some of my experience on them to help us along a little bit.”

“You can never count Jen out.”–Kate Cameron

The loss dropped Team Scheidegger to 2-4 heading into the Wednesday night game against Galusha (3-3) and made it nearly impossible for the Lethbridge-based group to advance to the next round.

“We kind of had them early but had a bit of a late slip up there. There were some big shots by both teams and some misses we could’ve capitalized on late but didn’t,” said Scheidegger’s third Kate Cameron, a Manitoban who hails from New Bothwell.

“You can never count Jen out.”

It’s been a frustrating week for Scheidegger as the team suffered a 10-3 loss to Yukon’s Hailey Birnie on Monday. It was the first win for Yukon at the Scotties since 2019.

“Our pool is too tough. You can’t take any games lightly. We lost a couple that we shouldn’t have, that slipped away from us, and here we are now,” said Cameron.

“You can’t lose games like that and expect to do well at the end of this.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31