reSports

Written by Adam Peleshaty

Three time reigning champ, Jennifer Jones

The 2011 Scotties Tournament of Hearts, held in Charlottetown from Feb 19 – 27 and the field for this year’s event will be especially strong. Featuring six of the top 15 teams in the country right now, according to the national team rankings, and eleven of the twelve skips in this event have won at least one national curling title either in the Scotties, Canadian Juniors, or Canadian Mixed championships.

However, the story regarding the calibre of teams in Charlottetown has been overshadowed by a soap opera which curling has probably never seen before.

The Jennifer Jones team is the three-time reigning national champs and will represent Team Canada again this year as the de facto favourite. But, after crashing and burning in last year’s Olympic Trials, the team dropped long-time third Cathy Overton-Clapham last summer and replaced her with former Canadian Junior champion Kaitlyn Lawes. This move created derision toward the Jones squad and public opinion has swayed heavily in favour of “Cathy O” ever since.

Overton-Clapham later formed another team with her as skip, Breanne Meakin as third (a former teammate of Kaitlyn Lawes), and a front end consisting of Raunora Westcott and Leslie Wilson, who were part of Jill Thurston’s Manitoba team in last year’s Scotties. The team won the right to represent Manitoba this year and is ranked ninth in the country. The fact that this team hasn’t yet played Jones this year will create a marquee matchup between the two teams in the evening draw on February 23rd.

The Jones team should reach the playoffs, and I think Cathy Overton-Clapham’s experience at the national level should send her to the playoffs, as well. If this happens, it will be the first time in 17 years that two teams from the same province have reached the playoffs in the Scotties. Both Sandra Schmirler (then Peterson) and Sherry Anderson of Saskatchewan reached the playoffs that year.

Both Jones and Overton-Clapham will be thoroughly tested, however, as B.C.’s Kelly Scott and Alberta’s Shannon Kleibrink return to the Scotties. Scott, a former teammate of Jones in junior and bête noire in the women’s level, is a two-time Scotties champion (2006, 2007) and Kleibrink, the 2006 Olympic bronze medalist, is looking to rebound from an end to last season, where she lost the Canadian Olympic Trials final to provincial rival Cheryl Bernard and the provincial title to unheralded Val Sweeting.

There are also potential dark horses to dethrone Jones as Saskatchewan’s Amber Holland returns to the Scotties for the second straight year currently ranked sixth in the country. Quebec’s Marie-France Larouche has reached the playoffs in every Scotties she has skipped and Ontario’s Rachel Homan, the youngest skip in the event at the age of 21, brings a team that has been very successful on the cashspiel circuit.

Other teams include the hometown team lead by P.E.I.’s Suzanne Birt who defeated last year’s runner-up Kathy O’Rourke to represent the province. In 2003, she lead her team to a 10-1 round robin before finishing in third and falling off the Canadian curling scene ever since. New Brunswick’s Andrea Kelly will look to improve on the 5-6 records she posted in her previous three Scotties (2006, 2009, 2010). Nova Scotia’s Heather Smith-Dacey, a three-time Canadian mixed champion, replaces curling legend Colleen Jones as skip due to Jones’ hospitalization with meningitis. She is coached by a former Brier champion, her husband Mark Dacey. Newfoundland and Labrador’s Stacie Devereaux will make her first appearance at a Scotties, the only rookie skip in the event. Finally, the Territories’ Kerry Galusha, the only skip in Charlottetown never to have won a national title of any kind, makes her sixth Scotties appearance in seven years returning from an absence last year.