Extra effort helps send Homan into Scotties final
Rachel Homan booked an express ticket to the Canadian women’s curling championship final with an extra-end
5-4 win over Jennifer Jones in an intense playoff game Saturday night.
Jones needs a win over fellow-Manitoban Kate Cameron in this afternoon’s semifinal to earn an evening rematch with Homan for the Scotties Tournament of Hearts title in Calgary.
Cameron downed Alberta’s Selena Sturmay 6-4 in an earlier elimination playoff game Saturday.
The winner of today’s final represents Canada at the world championship March 16-24 in Sydney, N.S., and returns to the 2025 Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Thunder Bay, Ont., as defending champion.
In a battle of skips with a combined nine titles between them, Homan stole a point in the extra end when Jones missed a tricky angle raise to score.
Homan beat Jones to the pin with a draw in the 10th that brought people to their feet in the WinSport Event Centre and forced an extra end.
“It was thrilling,” Homan’s lead Sarah Wilkes said. “I’m still shaking.”
The urgency in the skips’ voices throughout the game and Homan’s shouting triumphantly “that was unreal” to her teammates upon winning reflected the competitiveness of the two teams in what was a non-elimination game.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling to be able to to beat Jenn at her absolute best,” Homan said. “It was a very emotional game.”
Homan won the last of her three championships in 2017 before losing three straight finals from 2019 to 2021.
Homan, third Tracy Fleury and the front end of Emma Miskew and Wilkes remained unbeaten in Calgary with the win over Jones.
Homan’s team didn’t allow a stolen point in the tournament until Saturday’s sixth and eighth ends, when Jones took a 4-3 lead. Homan blanked the ninth to take hammer into the 10th when she executed her precision draw.
Jones’s attempt at a corner freeze with her first shot of the 11th was too heavy and she was unable to execute a tricky angle raise to score with her final shot.
“I just missed my last shot,” she said. “Both teams played well. I thought it was a great game. It was fun to be out there. Hopefully we’ll come out and play like that tomorrow.”
The six-time champion has said she’ll retire from team curling at the end of this season. Jones, 49, can still become the first woman to win seven championships before she’s done.
Her team could return next year as defending champion without her, as long as it retains the three remaining members under Curling Canada rules.
Jones, Homan and Einarson have long been the big three in Canadian women’s curling.
Cameron wormed her way into that conversation at this year’s Hearts when she halted Einarson’s run of consecutive titles with a playoff victory Friday night.
“I hope, but we put this team together knowing this was a building year, so I’m happy we’re moving forward right now,” Cameron said.
A national title was tantalizingly close, however.
“That would be wicked,” Cameron said. Host Alberta topped its pool at 7-1, but exited on back-to-back playoff losses.