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Meet the Teams: Canada, Ontario – Homan, Manitoba – Jones, Yukon
Meet the Teams competing at the 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts
Tickets for the 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts can be purchased at https://www.curling.ca/2024scotties/tickets/
The 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts is slated for Feb. 15-24 at the WinSport Event Centre in Calgary. Eighteen women’s teams will compete in the national curling championship. Meet the teams:
Team Canada
History is on the line at the 2024 Scotties Tournament of Hearts as Kerri Einarson and her Team Canada crew of vice-skip Val Sweeting, second Shannon Birchard and lead Briane Harris will be looking for a fifth-straight championship, a feat never previously accomplished.
In 2023, the Manitoba foursome matched Colleen Jones’s mark of four consecutive titles achieved from 2001-04 for Nova Scotia and Team Canada. The final three for Einarson and Co. were as Team Canada.
This is Einarson’s seventh trip to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, also competing in 2016 and 2018 prior to this current five-year run. She finished as runner-up in 2018 to Team Jennifer Jones. Einarson also claimed the 2021 Home Hardware Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship with Brad Gushue.
Sweeting has the most Scotties experience on the team, appearing seven previous times at nationals and finishing as the runner-up twice in 2014 and 2015 as a skip out of Alberta, prior to joining this successful Einarson team.
Aside from the last four Scotties Tournament of Hearts titles, Birchard also won the event in 2018 while playing vice-skip for Jennifer Jones as Kaitlyn Lawes was busy preparing for the Winter Olympic Games in mixed doubles, where she eventually won gold with John Morris.
With a win in 2024, Birchard can also match Colleen Jones, Jennifer Jones and Jill Officer’s record of six Scotties title. Birchard also won gold at Worlds in 2018 as an alternate with Jennifer Jones when Lawes returned to the rink, and Birchard is a two-time Canadian Junior silver medallist.
This will be Harris’s seventh trip to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, her first was an alternate for Einarson in 2016. Like the other three members of the rink, Harris was also a skip of her own team, guiding her rink from 2016-2018 before joining Einarson.
As a group in 2023, it was the 12th time a Team Canada entry has won the Scotties Tournament of Hearts. The team is coached by former Montana’s Brier and World champion Reid Carruthers.
Team Ontario-Homan
Is there a hotter women’s team in the country, or the world for that matter, than Rachel Homan’s Ontario crew?
In midst of a solid 2023-24 campaign, skip Homan, vice-skip Tracy Fleury, long-time teammate Emma Miskew at second and Sarah Wilkes at lead, the calling the Ottawa Curling Club foursome is on an incredible run.
So far this season, Team Homan is an impeccable 38-5, winning the WFG Masters, Saville Shootout, Red Deer Curling Classic, PointsBet Invitational and Co-op Canadian Open and finishing as runnerup at the KIOTI National. The team won its first 14 games this season.
The four have 32 Scotties appearances between them with Miskew leading the way with 10, one more than Homan who missed the 2022 Scotties due to her mixed doubles appearance with John Morris at the Winter Olympics. Wilkes has seven appearances at nationals and Fleury has competed in six.
Homan and Miskew have three Scotties titles and a World championship to their names and finished as silver medallists at nationals from 2019-21. The two also represented Canada at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Fleury is still looking for her first national Scotties title. She appeared in her first national women’s event by defeating Homan at the 2012 Ontario Scotties, while curling out of the Northern Ontario region. Her best finish at the Scotties was 8-4 in 2018 where Team Fleury lost the Page 3-4 game to Team Mary-Anne Arsenault. Fleury was also the runner-up at the Tim Hortons Canadian Curling Trials in 2021.
Wilkes’s six previous national Scotties’ appearances includes the last five straight from 2019-22, winning the 2019 event with skip Chelsea Carey, defeating Homan 8-6 with a steal of two in an extra end. Wilkes played vice-skip on that team.
Wilkes has two runner-up finishes at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, as an alternate in 2015 with skip Val Sweeting and in 2021 with Homan.
Team Homan is coached by Olympic silver medallist and two-time Montana’s Brier champ Don Bartlett and the alternate is Rachel Brown, who has competed in six Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
Team Manitoba-Jones
Jennifer Jones’ Manitoba rink features a slightly different look, with previous vice-skip Mackenzie Zacharias stepping away from the game. But the St. Vital and Altona crew otherwise remains intact with Karlee Burgess at third, Emily Zacharias plays second and holds the broom when Jones throws and Lauren Lenentine is at lead.
Jones’ rink lost the 2023 Scotties Tournament of Hearts final 10-4 to Kerri Einarson and continues to be a force in women’s play. It was Jones’ 17th appearance at the national championship, after a year away from the Scotties, due to her commitment as Canada’s Olympic women’s representative in 2022.
The team, with Glenn Howard as coach, heads into the 2024 Scotties on its strong positioning in the Canadian Team Ranking System.
Jones is a six-time Canadian women’s champion, tying Colleen Jones for the most ever as skip. Former second Jill Officer is also in that prestigious company. Jennifer Jones, who also has the most Scotties wins in the history of the event, is an Olympic champion and two-time World champion. At the 2014 Winter Olympics she became the first female skip to go through the event undefeated.
The remainder of her team are all former world junior champions who wore the Manitoba Bison for the first time at the national women’s championship in 2022 after defeating Winnipeg’s Kristy Watling 7-5 in the provincial women’s curling championship.
Led by Mackenzie Zacharias at the time, the young team was a Wild Card representative at the 2021 Scotties Tournament of Hearts and finished with a 3-5 record in Pool A in its first appearance at nationals.
The same four won the Manitoba, New Holland Canadian U21 and World Junior crowns in a successful 2020 campaign. The team, coached by dad Sheldon Zacharias, went undefeated at both the Manitoba (9-0) and Canadian (11-0) events. Mackenzie and her sister Emily were also on the team that claimed the 2016 Optimist U18 International Curling Championship in Edmonton.
Burgess had a very successful junior career winning five straight Canadian titles and adding three World Junior crowns with three different skips (Mary Fay, Kaitlyn Jones and Mackenzie Zacharias). Along with Fay, Tyler Tardi and Sterling Middleton, Burgess also captured gold at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics in Norway where the team went undefeated.
Emily Zacharias had teamed up with her sister throughout her young curling career and enjoyed the same successes while playing second.
This season, Team Jones is 35-21, winning the HearingLife Tour Challenge Tier 1 event, finishing second at both the Saville Shootout and Stu Sells 1824 Halifax Classic and third at the WFG Masters.
Team Yukon
Bayly Scoffin will make her very first appearance at the Scott Tournament of Hearts after her team of vice-skip Kerry Foster, second Raelyn Helston, lead Kim Tuor and alternate Helen Strong claimed the territorial crown.
This will be Tuor’s fourth Scotties appearance and third straight, all playing as a lead. Her only win at nationals came last season with skip Hailey Birnie after finishing 1-6.
Scoffin, the younger sister of Montana’s Brier competitor Thomas Scoffin, finished 1-7 at the 2022 New Holland U21 Canadian Championship. She also competed in the 2021 Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship with her father Wade Scoffin and is currently a member of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) team, along with Helston.
Scoffin also competed at the 2015 and 2023 Canada Winter Games; 2020, 2022 and 2023 U21 nationals; and 2023 Canadian Colleges Athletic Association championship with SAIT.
Strong, the alternate, is Scoffin’s mother and has competed in numerous events, including the 2019 Scotties as lead for Birnie when the team finished 1-6 and the 2020 Canadian Mixed where she teamed up with son Thomas and his then fiancée, Kim Brown, and husband Wade Scoffin.
Foster (nee Campbell) will compete in her third-straight Scotties, having played second with Birnie. She also competed in the 1996 New Holland U21 Canadian championship and 1995 Canada Winter Games.
Helston was a silver medallist for Alberta at the 2022 U18 nationals and finished third at the national U21 competition that same year. She is also a 2022 Canadian Junior Spirits Award winner and was a quarter-finalist at the 2023 U21 nationals.