THE CANADIAN PRESS
Jennifer Jones has taken both the long and short playoff roads to her four Canadian women’s curling championships.
Her Manitoba rink has a chance to win it the quickest way possible again. Jones will play in Friday’s Page playoff between the top two seeds, with the winner taking the expressway to Sunday’s final.
"Experience never hurts. We’ve been here before," Jones said Thursday. "We know to expect."
Jones won her titles in both 2005 and 2010 via wins in the one-two game. In 2008 and 2009, her teams battled through four games in a row starting with a tiebreaker to wear the Maple Leaf.
Jones, third Kaitlyn Lawes, second Jill Officer and lead Dawn Askin sewed up first place in the preliminary round at this year’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts early.
With a draw remaining Thursday, no team could catch Manitoba for first place. A 7-4 win over Quebec’s Marie-France Larouche in the afternoon ensured the Winnipeg team would have an advantageous playoff seed.
Manitoba (8-2) will start Friday’s game with last-rock advantage and their choice of rocks.
"You just want to make the playoffs, but we’ll take it," Jones said. "We’ve played the one-two game before and we haven’t. You just have to go and play well and you just really want to get in the playoffs.
"That’s all you want and we’re in and we’re thrilled."
The top four teams advance to the Page playoffs and ties for fourth are solved by tiebreaker games. The loser of Friday’s game drops to Saturday’s semifinal to face the winner of the playoff between the third and fourth seeds.
Manitoba snapped the five-game winning streak of Quebec, who were stilled assured at least at tiebreaker by finishing 7-4.
"We’re just confident enough right now," said Larouche, a finalist the last time the Scotties was held in Red Deer in 2004.
"Our first goal is to play again tomorrow and we are there. We are able to play better than that, so it’s good for us. Maybe we (get) revenge against her."
B.C.’s Kelly Scott (7-3), defending champion Amber Holland (6-4) and Alberta’s Heather Nedohin (6-4) were still jostling for playoff spots in the late draw.
The playoff aspirations of New Brunswick’s Rebecca Atkinson were thin after an 11-4 loss to Prince Edward Island. New Brunswick (5-5) was to face B.C. at night.
Jones is the dominant skip in women’s curling. The 37-year-old lawyer and Officer were teammates for their four titles with Askin at lead for the last three.
Jones replaced third Cathy Overton-Clapham with Lawes in 2010. The team lost in last year’s final in Charlottetown to Holland.
The consistency that makes the Jones team perennial contenders was on display this week. Manitoba never lost two games in a row.
The one game they were cold was a 7-3 loss to Holland. Officer fell and burned a rock in the sixth end of that game, which gave up a steal of two. Manitoba’s other loss was 8-6 to Alberta.
"You never expect to go through undefeated, but I felt happy with how we were playing," Jones said. "We were getting pretty good results out of our shots. A couple of blips along the way."
Jones said she was oblivious to the stakes in the game versus Larouche.
"I just found out 30 seconds ago we were playing on Friday night," she said. "We just didn’t think about it to be honest with you. We knew it was a big game, but we didn’t really look at the standings heading in."
This year’s Tournament of Hearts has been marked by illness and injury.
Sasha Carter was back in B.C.’s lineup Thursday after missing two separate days earlier in the tournament with a stomach ailment. Carter is four months pregnant and needed fluids replaced intravenously before she was ready to play again.
"On the mend, definitely," Cater said. "I just couldn’t get hydrated no matter what I drank. It was crazy. I’ve never been that sick in my life.
"Everything I was taking was going to other people in my body and not to me."
Holland’s second, Tammy Schneider, was still sidelined in the morning draw, also with illness. Schneider played only two ends Wednesday and missed almost two games earlier in the week with a knee injury. New Brunswick lead Jodie deSolla missed a third straight game Thursday with a pulled muscle from sweeping.
The defending champions were upset 7-5 by Kerry Galusha of Yukon and Northwest Territories and faced Saskatchewan at night.
Galusha’s Yellowknife team started the tournament 2-1, but were then derailed by that stomach malady that made the rounds at the tournament. They had only three players for their game against New Brunswick
Lack of competition in the north and the expense of travelling to World Curling Tour events make it difficult for Territories teams to contend at national championships. But Galusha won both games Thursday to finish 4-7 and wonder what might have been had her team stayed healthy.
"We had high hopes. This is the hardest I’ve ever prepared to come here," Galusha said. "It was just bad timing. I’m just like ‘why did this happen to us?" I feel like this is one of the better teams I’ve had and it was just too bad."
Galusha’s brother are Kevin and Jamie Koe, who are representing Alberta and the Territories respectively in the upcoming Canadian men’s championship in Saskatoon.
Heather Strong of Newfoundland and Labrador also finished the tournament 4-7 ahead of P.E.I.’s Kim Dolan at 3-8.