Koe, Jones walk away with the loot
Familiar rinks deliver with money on the line in Pinty’s All-Star Skins Game
For Kevin Koe and his teammates, this weekend’s Pinty’s All-Star Skins Game wasn’t just an opportunity to make a bunch of money.
Sure, they were thrilled to be cashing a $75,500 cheque after putting in two days of work in Banff — who wouldn’t be? — but there was more at stake than just the size of their bank accounts.
With last year’s Brier win earning them an automatic berth into this year’s event, Koe & Co. wanted to make sure they got a boost before heading into an extended break during which their rivals will be playing at provincial playdowns.
“We’ve obviously had our ups and downs this year, it hasn’t been our best year,” Koe said Sunday after beating Brad Jacobs in the Skins Game final. “To come out and play the way we did and win, it should give us a lot of confidence. I think we played great, so now we’ve just got to put in some hard work.”
Saying that Koe’s rink — which includes third Marc Kennedy, second Brett Laing and lead Ben Hebert — played great is something of an understatement, especially on Sunday.
A day after knocking off Sweden’s Niklas Edin in the semifinal, the Calgary-based Koe team shut out the Olympic champion Jacobs rink and won $42,000 in the final. They also won $17,500 on Saturday and got a $15,000 bonus for winning the whole event, so it was a lucrative weekend.
Sunday’s big payday didn’t come easy, though, as the final result came down to a draw-to-the-button with $37,000 on the line.
“The arms were a little wobbly, a little nervous,” Hebert said. “But that’s what the Skins are all about and we don’t usually play for that much money.
“Kevin had his draw weight in his back pocket today, and when your skips has his draw weight it’s pretty easy to win. He played great and showed it in his last two shots.”
Sunday also marked the first time that the Koe rink has beaten the Jacobs team so far this season, as the Northern Ontario foursome got the better of the Calgarians in all three of their previous meetings.
But the Koe team looked as if it was rounding into form over the weekend, and while they’re only sitting at No. 7 on the World Curling Tour Money List, nobody should be surprised if they make a deep run at the Brier.
And if they do, it would not be surprising if they run into Jacobs’ team in the late stages of the national championship.
“To play great against Jacobs, I always look at them as the best or a top-two team in the world, so to get a win against them today is big heading into the Brier,” Hebert said. “We didn’t put as much work into the game as we probably should have at the start of the year. With already being in the Continental Cup and being in the Brier and being in the Skins, we had nothing to really play for and this isn’t the year where you usually want to peak, you want to peak at the (Olympic trials).
“We realized in a real hurry that these teams are going too hard and you can’t be complacent and we’ve put a lot of work in on the ice to get better.”
On the women’s side of the draw, Jennifer Jones showed yet again that her loss at Manitoba provincials last week hadn’t thrown her off her game.
Jones defeated Val Sweeting in the final for a second straight year, scoring on the final shot of the eighth end to win $41,000 and bring her weekend total to $53,000.
It was a tight, back-and-forth game in which both teams seized momentum back and forth from one another, but as she’s done so many times in her career, Jones found that last little magic.
“It was nice to come out and play well and beat a really great team,” Jones said of bouncing back from the loss at provincials. “It’s something we really wanted to do.”