curling thursday side

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This article was published 24/02/2011 (5524 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

CHARLOTTETOWN — The numbers speak for themselves.

And the story they tell is of a curling team that, perhaps more than any other before them, rises to the occasion when the lights burn their brightest.

Consider: Over the past three years, Jennifer Jones is 9-3 on the final two days of the round robin at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.

And once the playoffs start? A perfect 10-0 in the last three years.

Jones has continued that trend here. After a shaky 3-2 start, she has won three of her last four — the only blemish a dramatic 8-6 loss Wednesday night to her highly motivated former teammate, Manitoba’s Cathy Overton-Clapham, that could be excused by the 93 per cent shooting performance by Overton-Clapham it took to beat Jones.

So what is it about Team Canada and Jones that makes them so good when the pressure is at its greatest near week’s end?

“You know Jennifer’s team is going to play tough in the playoffs. That’s what they do,” said Saskatchewan’s Amber Holland, who is in first place at 8-1 heading into today and appears to be on a collision course with second-place Jones at some point in these playoffs.

“We play them on the World Curling Tour and we know,” added Holland, “that in the last few games, they always play tough.

“A person I used to curl with used to say that you have to get to finals and play in them to have the experience to be able to play in them. They’ve just been in those situations so many times that they do all those things well.”

Beaten

The last time Jones was beaten in a playoff game was Feb. 24, 2007 at the Scotties in Lethbridge when Team Canada’s Kelly Scott beat Manitoba 7-5 in the semifinal.

Jones isn’t the only team, however, who rises to the occasion towards weekend. Alberta’s Shannon Kleibrink, who heads into today tied for second place with Jones, Ontario’s Rachel Homan and Nova Scotia’s Heather Smith-Dacey at 6-3, has also been red hot in Canadian curling events once Wednesday rolls around.

Dating back to 2005, Kleibrink has a record of 15-3 from Wednesday on in the two Trials and two Scotties she’s played at in that period.

And she is holding to that form again here, winning both her games Wednesday — 7-3 over New Brunswick and 9-4 over Quebec — to put her team in the hunt.

In stark contrast, Ontario’s Rachel Homan is emerging as a skip who does her best curling at the start of an event.

Homan opened this event at 5-0 and quickly became a media darling, with one scribe even going so far as to suggest that the 21-year-old was revolutionizing the entire women’s game with her team’s hard-throwing style.

Errr, on second thought, maybe not.

Homan comes into today at 6-3 after a dreadful two days that saw her lose three of her last four games — including beat-downs at the hands of Canada’s Jones Wednesday morning and Manitoba’s Cathy Overton-Clapham Wednesday afternoon.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca