Fleury rights ship at Scotties, Jones hanging in

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This article was published 18/02/2019 (1892 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SYDNEY, N.S. — It’s no secret that Tracy Fleury is tenacious. Her team knows that. So do her opponents. They’ve seen, through the years, how the soft-spoken skip can stiffen her lip and claw back from the edge, time and again.

So when Fleury downed Rachel Homan on Tuesday morning, handing the Ontario champion her first loss of the week and salvaging Team Manitoba’s dented record to 3-2, it wasn’t even surprising. Up until then, Homan had looked all but invincible in Sydney, and didn’t play badly; Fleury, quite simply, outfoxed her.

Add to that a 12-2 evening win over Nunavut (1-5), and it seems the East St. Paul team of Fleury, third Selena Njegovan, second Liz Fyfe and lead Kristin MacCuish have righted the ship after a shaky 0-2 start. More than that, the skip just seemed restored to her usual balance: some pluck, some poise, some guts.

“She’s back to herself,” Njegovan said, buzzing with energy after the morning win. “The first couple of games, she had a few tough ones she usually makes, they just kind of got away from her. But now, she’s making everything.”

Fleury was sensational when she needed to be against Homan, putting rocks where even the world’s most dominant skip couldn’t find them. There was the magnificent eighth-end draw behind cover — finished by a stout sweep — which set up a stolen Manitoba single, and Fleury’s last shot in nine, which saved her team’s skin.

“Nine wasn’t looking pretty at all, we kind of struggled throughout that end,” Njegovan said. “With how it was going, we were like, ‘we’re OK giving a deuce up.’ But Tracy made a beauty of a runback double hit and roll behind.”

After that shot settled, Homan tried a runback double with hammer to remove Fleury’s shot rock. The strike missed, and Manitoba stole another point for a 6-4 lead coming home. In the 10th, another deft Fleury draw into a busy house left Homan slim chance for a game-saving deuce. Homan managed a single point to lose 6-5.

That wasn’t the end of the bad news Tuesday for Ontario. At night, they struggled with the ice as they clashed with Alberta’s Chelsea Carey. It was Carey who triumphed, winning 6-3 to polish her unbeaten streak to 6-0. Homan’s team laughed off the frustrating misses, as they slipped to a 4-2 record. What else could they do?

Manitoba is still facing a steep uphill battle to stay in contention. Their last round-robin match today is crucial, and comes against a familiar opponent in Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville (4-2). Before Fleury hopped provinces this season, the two skips had spent the last decade playing tug of war for that region’s title.

So Fleury seems back on track. But in the other round-robin group, defending Canadian champion Jennifer Jones is another matter. She won her afternoon game against Yukon (0-5) — it would have been disaster if she hadn’t — but Jones still played off-kilter, with misses at key times: flashing a wide-open hit in six, for instance.

At first, Jones and her crew from Manitoba looked to be back to her old tricks in the game, wielding hammer for a five-spot in the first end. But Yukon chipped away at that lead with two stolen singles and two deuces; that Canada sealed the 9-7 victory is necessary for their hopes, but they will need to be sharper against higher seeds.

One beautiful thing came out of the game. Longtime former Jones second Jill Officer, who retired after last season but is in Sydney as alternate, stepped in to throw lead rocks after the fifth-end break. At almost exactly the same time, TSN announced that fans had voted Officer the greatest Canadian second of all time.

Just the day before, Jones lead Dawn McEwen had been named the all-time great at her position.

“I’m incredibly honoured,” Officer said after the game. “There are so many great female seconds out there, I’m a little speechless I guess. I’m really honoured that everyone sees me that way. I feel like I worked really hard at my game, so I appreciate the votes.”

Now it’s time for Jones and her team to buckle down. At 3-2 on the week, it’s do-or-die for them today, with their championship-round hopes on the line. In the morning, they’ll face Newfoundland (1-4); at night, they’ll go head to head with Wild Card skip Casey Scheidegger (4-1).

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This has been, in many ways, a surprising round robin. It’s not just that Jones has struggled. It’s also that, most recent Scotties draws have felt like dragging out the inevitable, as teams such as Homan or Jones sliced and diced their lower-seeded competition. But that hasn’t happened here at Centre 200.

Call it the year of the underdog. Going into the week, it was guaranteed to be a fracas; the national field is the strongest it’s been in years. So it’s even more remarkable that this is also the edition that saw skips such as British Columbia’s Sarah Wark (4-2), a national rookie with little elite experience, upsetting the top seeds.

Or, there was the strong start by Northwest Territories veteran Kerry Galusha, now at 3-2. She’s led 14 teams to the Scotties as skip and never made the playoffs. Her best record came in 2017 when she went 5-6. Now, she believes she has the team to make a historic run for her territory.

What all of this means: everything’s a jumble. With just three round-robin draws left, there is little clarity about what teams will land where, other than that Alberta is for sure advancing to the championship round. Tiebreakers are looming; at least one is guaranteed. There could be some twists in the story, even shocking eliminations.

The 2019 Scotties is headed for a wild finish. Game on.

 

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca