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Rachel Homan and Maple United have hope yet.
One day after being swept by Brad Jacobs and Shield Curling Club, Maple returned the favour in mixed fours on Saturday at Rock League at Toronto’s Mattamy Athletic Centre.
“We were pretty down last night,” said Maple’s Mike McEwen, who skipped his foursome to a 5-4 victory. “But I felt the energy with my team, a sheet over the same thing, we were firing and just the mood was a complete flip today. What a turnaround. That was fun. That’s gonna be one of the highlights of my year playing that game.”
The two points means Maple is still alive for a berth into Sunday’s playoffs, while Shield’s fate will also lie in the final two mixed-fours draws.
Both games were extremely tight — and each entered the seventh and final end in identical scenarios, with Shield leading 4-3 but Maple holding hammer.
Took a shootout to settle a Rock League weekend battle between Shield and Maple Saturday at the Mattamy Athletic Centre in Toronto.
On Sheet A, the Maple group of McEwen, Xenia Schwaller, Karlee Burgess and Tanner Horgan pulled off a relatively stress-free deuce for the win.
They then huddled around Sheet B, where Ross Whyte needed to cover the pinhole with a draw to win it for Maple in regulation — however, he came up painstakingly close, scoring just one and forcing a tiebreaker.
Shooting first, Jacobs threw his draw to the button a touch heavy. Then, some hard sweeping from Homan, Brett Gallant and Jocelyn Peterman guided their yellow rock just far enough to seal the sweep.
“We didn’t get the results we were hoping for on a bunch of shots,” Jacobs said. “And usually that’s either release stuff or communication stuff, weight stuff. It’s a combination of all of it. So we just gotta clean that up a little bit, make more shots and we win.”
Mixed fours is a relatively new format to curlers, who mostly play traditional fours or mixed doubles.
It led to an all-star matchup between Canadian Olympians Jacobs and Homan — a thrill to fans in the arena, even while Jacobs said he barely noticed.
“Like playing anyone else. She’s a great curler. What can I say? … I was trying to focus on my team because we were doing a lot of learning out there and it was a little difficult. So I was consumed by our own game and our own team,” Jacobs said.
On the other hand, McEwen was able to soak in the moment.
“Put it this way: at what point could you say I just played with the current world champion [Schwaller] and Canadian champion [Burgess] ladies on my mixed team? Like when does that happen?” he said.
McEwen, who had been playing third all week before moving to final stones for mixed fours, said Maple got together Friday night to map out the teams and communication.
He added that role definition was key.
“What systems are we using for numbers and weight calling and are we gonna rely on Tanner to swivel a lot or are we gonna just kinda do our roles and less chaos? Trying to make it as smooth a transition as possible, and we leaned on that,” he said.
In the afternoon draw, Alpine Curling Club will meet Frontier Curling Club. Northern United takes on Typhoon Curling Club in the late draw.
The top four teams will then advance to Sunday’s semifinals, with the championship match set for later in the day. The winning team leaves with $100,000 US.
Live coverage throughout is available on CBC-TV, CBC Gem and CBCSports.ca.
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