Rock school in session

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2010 (5889 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SWIFT CURRENT, Sask. — The student might have started out looking like the teacher, but Team Canada’s Jennifer Jones got out the chalkboard somewhere around the fifth end.

So it was that Jones’s St. Vital foursome, after an inauspicious beginning Saturday night, rebounded to dispatch a rookie-laden Swedish squad 9-6 to open the Ford World Women’s Curling championship unharmed.

At the outset, it appeared as though the favoured Jones, a veteran of her fourth Worlds, caught a break when Sweden’s Anette Norberg, the gold medallist at the Olympics, bowed out of the championship in place of 22-year-old Cecilia Ostlund, the runner-up of the Swedish nationals.

But lo and behold, if Team Canada doesn’t come out flatter than an ice sheet, falling behind 5-1 after four ends, with Jones curling at 64 per cent, and Ostlund a perfect 100 per cent.

Jones insisted, however, early misses weren’t a case of failing to read the ice, which is always a concern in the early draws.

"For the most part, we just weren’t making enough shots," she said. "Our rock positions, we’d leave them an out. And they made great shots. They played awesome to start that game. They were on fire."

Indeed, the entire Swedish team, aged 22 and 23, didn’t seem intimidated by either Jones or a full house at the 2,400-seat complex.

However, it was a double by Team Canada second Jill Officer in the fifth end — leaving Canada lying two buried — that seemed to wake up the Jones crew, pulling it to within 5-3.

Then another draw buried by Officer in the sixth set up an end where Ostlund had to draw against four with her last stone, and came up short, to surrender a steal of three to Canada.

Jones stole another in the seventh, and Ostlund replied with a single in eight. By the time Jones drew for a deuce in the ninth, to take a comfortable 9-6 lead, the battle was all but won. Jones ran the Swedes out of rocks in the 10th.

Obviously, Jones, a four-time Canadian champion, never panicked, even after struggling out of the hack. "I don’t think experience is necessary," Jones said, "but I don’t think it hurts. We know our team can come back, we’ve done it just a few times. Maybe just a couple."

Jones was being a little cheeky, of course. Her record of coming from behind — just as she did to win the 2010 Scotties title — is well-known. But suggest to Jones that her Canadian squad might be expected to cake walk over less seasoned opponents, and she’ll balk.

"It’s never a cake walk," Jones protested, mildly. "You guys (the media) just like to make it up that it’s going to be easy. You try."

Class dismissed.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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