A shot at history Jennifer Jones chasing unprecedented seventh national title against stacked Scotties field By: Melissa Martin Posted: 7:00 PM CST Friday, Feb. 15, 2019 Last Modified: 10:03 AM CST Friday, Feb. 15, 2019 Updates

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This article was published 14/02/2019 (2143 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SYDNEY, N.S. — Even now, it’s hard for Jennifer Jones to believe a year has already flown by since she won her record-tying sixth Canadian title. The summer came and went, and then the rocks started roaring again: time flies so fast, she says.

Still, in-between, there was time for Jones and her team. Time to let the roller-coaster of the last season sink in, and slide by. Time to get away from the ice, to spend time with family, to give themselves a long and sorely needed rest.

“Take it easy.” That was the goal of the off-season, Jones says. They could afford to let it glide easy. The last Olympic quadrennial was over, the new one yet to begin. The old slate was wiped clean; a long grind was ahead.

“We’ve never, ever been burned out, and it’s because we make sure we have a plan,” Jones says, chatting days before the Scotties kicks off today in Sydney, N.S. “We’ve done it for the past two cycles as well. It works for us.”

And they needed the rest. The 2017-18 campaign had been an emotional one, studded with triumphs and aching disappointment, capped by a goodbye that put a ribbon around one of curling history’s most famous partnerships.

They’d fallen short at the Olympic trials, an ache salved when third Kaitlyn Lawes won Olympic mixed doubles gold. But they regrouped to win Canada and then, with Lawes back in the hack, blazed unbeaten through the world field.

That day, as they embraced on the ice in North Bay, Ont., the tears fell heavier than most: it would be the last time they’d win with longtime second Jill Officer, who’d recently announced her retirement as a full-time member.

So this season, Jones says, their guiding light has been just to have fun. They had their place at the 2019 Scotties Tournament of Hearts assured as Team Canada, neatly avoiding the shooting gallery to escape crowded Manitoba.

Plus, they wanted to give new second Jocelyn Peterman time to settle in, to get used to her new front-end partner Dawn McEwen and to the skip. So far, Peterman — previously second for Chelsea Carey — has been a perfect fit.

“She’s exactly what we thought she’d be,” Jones says. “Amazing person, great teammate. She’s got all the shots.”

Now, Jones will need every one of those shots as she prepares to lead her team into the 2019 Scotties Tournament of Hearts. If they are to defend their Canadian title in Sydney, then it will take her team giving everything they’ve got.

(By the by, Officer will be along for the ride as alternate: she will doubtless throw rocks at some point.)

For Jones, every Scotties is now a chance to make history. If she wins Canada again, she will set a new all-time record, passing the high-water mark of six she tied last year, first set by Nova Scotia curling icon Colleen Jones.

It won’t be easy. Sydney will feature one of the most competitive national fields in years, loaded with top-end talent: notably, it’s the first time since 2015 that the Scotties has included both Jones and Ontario dynamo Rachel Homan.

And Homan has been electrifying this year, silencing critics after her Olympic disappointment. She’s won five of the nine World Curling Tour events she’s competed and qualified in all the rest. Her record going into Scotties is 51-13.

That right there makes it a tough fight. Then you add hotshots including Alberta’s Carey, expat Manitoban and 2016 Canadian champion, or Manitoba’s Tracy Fleury, fresh off a stellar playdown effort to win the buffalo jacket.

Plus, there is whoever comes out of tonight’s wild-card game, which will pit Gimli’s Kerri Einarson — the second-ranked team in Canada — against Alberta’s Casey Scheidegger for a last-chance bid to make the Scotties draw.

If Einarson wins, it would be the second year in a row the 16-team field will include four current or former Manitoba champions. But no matter which of them takes the wild card’s black jacket, they will be a serious playoff threat.

There are other contenders. Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville is seeded ninth, in part because she doesn’t travel as much as other teams; but she is dangerous at Scotties, having made the semifinal and final in her last two visits.

So Jones will enter Sydney as a favourite, although not — as she was in 2018 — a runaway one.

At 44, Jones is still one of the most daunting skips on the circuit, but she is not as dominant as she once was. Other teams have caught up: this season, Jones sits at third on the Canadian team rankings, trailing Homan and Einarson.

But even in the current “take it easy” season, her team has been solid. They’ve gone 39-21 on the tour circuit and qualified for playoffs in all of the nine events they entered, except one: January’s Canadian Open was the lone flop.

And the skip still has the razzle-dazzle. When she won a record-setting fourth Canada Cup in December, she did it with a highlight-reel hit, one of the best fans have seen all year. It was a long runback double to score three over Einarson.

“We’re really happy with our season,” she says. “We’ve lost in a couple quarters and semis, a shot here and a shot there we’d like to take back… but we won the Canada Cup, which was one of our goals. And it’s been a ton of fun.”

Now, she’s going into Scotties on a high note. She is fresh off the TSN All-Star Curling Skins Game in Banff, where she beat Scheidegger and Fleury to clinch $51,000 in prize money; not bad, for two games and a weekend’s work.

“It was fun,” Jones says. “We got to play with tons of rocks in play, and having to draw a lot. It’s great practice and we had a training camp right after. So we felt really good, felt like we had really prepared heading into the Scotties.”

The 2019 Scotties Tournament of Hearts runs through to Feb. 24. The tournament round robin kicks off Saturday, with the playoff-placement battles of the championship round set for Thursday and Friday of next week.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large

Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.

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