New-look Canada’s Team Homan maintains perfect record at Pan Continentals

LACOMBE, Alta. — Playing an inexperienced Mexican team Wednesday night at the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships was just the right opportunity for Canada’s Team Rachel Homan to try a different lineup on the ice.

Alternate Rachel Brown saw her first action of the event, slotting in at vice-skip for the first time in her career and giving Tracy Fleury the night off to observe from the bench with coaches Viktor Kjell and Renee Sonnenberg.

It was a new look, but a familiar result as the Ottawa-based reigning Canadian and world champs cruised to a 10-1 victory over the Adriana Camarena-skipped Mexican team (1-5) at the Gary Moe Auto Group Sportsplex.

The win was Canada’s sixth in succession and left Homan, Fleury, second Emma Miskew, lead Sarah Wilkes, Brown, Kjell and Sonnenberg tied for first place with also-unbeaten Team Miyu Ueno of Japan.

“It’s not every day you get to play third for Rachel Homan,” said Brown with a smile. “So you know, it was really, really fun. I would have liked to play a little bit better, but the girls were dialled. They played so well.”

Brown performed just fine, thanks very much, considering she’d never thrown third stones in her life and was seeing her first action of the championships.

“She’s got a great energy out there so it was good for the team, a lot of laughs and she played great,” said Kjell. 

And it was more of the same from the rest of her teammates, who continued to impress as Canada looks to win this event for the first time in its short history.

As the Canadians have done consistently here, they opened strong, getting three in the first end, and stealing one more in the second. Mexico hit the scoreboard with a single in the third, but Team Homan put the win away with two in the fourth, a steal of three in the fifth and one more in the sixth before Mexico conceded.

“I’ve liked what I’ve seen all week,” said Kjell. “It’s just sometimes when you’re playing teams that you know you’re going to beat, it’s almost a little bit tougher because you’ve got to keep your focus up and you don’t want to get into any bad habits, so it’s just go out there and do your job. and they did a good job tonight.”

Canada will close out the round robin Thursday at 2 p.m. (all times Mountain) against Japan in a game that will decide first place in the round robin, which also secures last-rock advantage and choice of stones in the playoffs.

It’ll be just the second time Team Homan and Team Ueno have met; the first was last March at the 2024 BKT Tires World Women’s Championship, where Team Homan prevailed 7-2.

“They seem to be in a good groove but so are we,” said Kjell. “So I think we’ve got a pretty good game plan. We’ll get a handle all the rocks tonight (during a late-night practice) and look forward to tomorrow.”

The top four teams make the playoffs, with first place playing fourth and second playing third in the semifinals Friday at 9 a.m. The semifinal winners will go for gold Saturday at 3 p.m., while the losers will meet for the bronze medal Friday at 7 p.m.

In other games Wednesday night, Japan defeated South Korea’s Team Eunji Gim (4-2) 6-4; Team Cory Thiesse of the United States (3-3) sailed past Chinese Taipei’s Team Ko Yang (0-6) 19-0; and China’s Team Rui Wang (3-3) was a 9-4 winner over New Zealand’s Team Chelsea Suddens (1-5).

The U.S. will take on China Thursday at 2 p.m., with the winner joining Canada, Japan and South Korea in the playoffs. All five countries have officially secured berths into the 2025 LGT World Women’s Curling Championship next March in Uijeongbu, South Korea.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Team Brad Gushue (6-0) will close out men’s round-robin play Thursday at 9 a.m. against China’s Team Xu Xiaoming (4-2), a possible semifinal preview.

The men’s semis are Thursday at 7 p.m., with the winners advancing to the gold-medal game Saturday at 10 a.m., and the losers going for bronze Friday at 2 p.m.

Live scoring, standings and statistics for the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships is available by CLICKING HERE.

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Ticket information for the 2024 Pan Continental Curling Championships is available by CLICKING HERE.

This story will be posted in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/category-all-posts-fr/?lang=fr