Case can be made Homan deserves a Team Canada spot at Scotties
An exemption cleared the way for Jennifer Jones and her team to return to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts as Team Canada next year.
A case can be made that Rachel Homan’s rink should have the chance to wear the red and white at the women’s national curling championship as well.
Jones won the 2018 Scotties last season to secure a 2019 berth as defending champion. But only two members of the team that won last February in Penticton, B.C., would be returning, leaving Jones one short of the minimum.
Jones skipped a Team Manitoba lineup that included lead Dawn McEwen, second Jill Officer and Shannon Birchard at third. Birchard was a substitute for vice-skip Kaitlyn Lawes, who didn’t play because she was preparing to play in the mixed doubles competition at the Winter Olympics.
Officer, who recently stepped away from competitive curling, has been replaced by Jocelyn Peterman this season while Lawes returned to the Jones rink after the Games.
Curling Canada said it would craft a rule exemption to allow Jones to play as Team Canada at the Feb. 16-24 Scotties in Sydney, N.S., with a federation official explaining that a team should not be penalized because a player was representing their country at an international event. Homan, meanwhile, won the Scotties in 2017 and normally would have returned as Team Canada in 2018. But since her team of third Emma Miskew, second Joanne Courtney and lead Lisa Weagle won the Olympic Trials, they were unable to return to the Scotties because of the scheduling conflict with the Pyeongchang Games.
“I think there are some similarities in those two scenarios and I know that both team scenarios either have been looked at or are in the process of being looked at with the intention of finding a fair and equitable solution,” said Curling Canada high-performance director Gerry Peckham.
Michelle Englot replaced Homan as Team Canada at the 2018 Scotties, which moved to a 16-team format last season with the addition of a wild-card playin game. The two highest-ranked teams who played in provincial/ territorial championships were eligible to earn the final berth and become Team Wild Card.
One potential solution for 2019 would be to drop the play-in game for one year and give Homan’s team a ‘Canada 2’ entry, since like Lawes, they were unable to compete at the Scotties due to international commitments.
However, that could remove a big-name draw from the Jan. 27Feb. 3 Ontario championship. It would also upend a wild-card qualification formula that was agreed upon by member associations and a play-in game that proved to be quite popular.
Peckham has said there is flexibility to adjust event-based rules, but there are several stakeholders to consider.
“The predominant rationale being should there be a punitive consequence to a player that is brought about by a conflict in schedules that had nothing to do with the player and everything to do with those in charge of organizing those events?,” Peckham said from Ottawa in a recent interview.
“So I think if you take a mindset where you’re not seeking a punitive consequence, where you’re trying to find a fair and reasonable solution either for an athlete or a team that was representing their country, then in theory that should lead you down a pathway where you wouldn’t be all that challenged to simply do the right thing.”