 VIRGINIA, Minn. — Any team with aspirations of greatness knows it must find ways to win in all kinds of games. Team Rachel Homan’s ambitions are well-chronicled, of course, and along with those ambitions comes the experience to know that not every victory will come easily. Thursday morning at the 2025 United States Steel Pan Continental Curling Championships, it was the grit and determination of Homan, vice-skip Tracy Fleury, second Emma Miskew, lead Sarah Wilkes, alternate Rachelle Brown, and coaches Renee Sonnenberg and Viktor Kjell on display. The two-time reigning Canadian and World champs from Ottawa rallied from giving up an early four to South Korea’s Team Eunji Gim and gutted out an 11-9 win to move closer to locking down a playoff spot. The win improved Canada’s record to 3-1 while South Korea dropped to 1-3. All the teams were greeted with new conditions at the Iron Trail Motors Event Center in Virginia, Minn., after World Curling ice technicians textured the stones late Wednesday night, and it took Canada some time to adjust. “I thought we made a lot of mistakes,” said Homan. “We tried to puzzle it out, and we moved a couple of rocks around that fooled the sweepers. That really cost us. But once we had the rocks in the right spots, I think we drastically improved our percentages. We just kept trying to stick together and try to make the next one.” One of those mistakes was particularly costly as Homan’s final stone of the second end came up light, despite the team believing it had the necessary weight upon release. That allowed Gim to make a draw to backing for the four-ender. But Homan responded with a classic skip’s deuce in the third, setting it up with a perfect freeze on her first stone, and the comeback was on. “We just wanted to stay tough,” said Miskew. “With the way that it was a bit of a new surface with those (freshly textured) rocks, we thought that if we just put some pressure on, just put our rocks in good spots, that we could get a couple mistakes. You don't have to catch up all in one end. You can do it slowly. I thought we did a decent job at that.” Canada took its first lead in the sixth. An end earlier, Homan made a wonderful short angle-tap raise to score a pair and tie the game 5-5, and then stole a deuce in the sixth when Gim was heavy on her last-rock draw. After South Korea retook the lead with three in the seventh, the Canadians fought back immediately in the eighth with three of their own, finished off by Homan’s angle tap, followed by a crucial steal of one in the ninth that essentially put the game out of reach. “I think we were throwing really well, and the rocks fooled us,” said Homan. “So we just kept throwing the same, and then made more shots, and we knew that we would play better as we figured out how to throw them.” Team Homan is back on the ice Thursday at 8 p.m. (all times Eastern) against China’s Team Rui Wang (4-0) in a game with significant implications for playoff positioning. The top four teams after round-robin play will advance to the semifinals, which are set for Saturday at 8 p.m. In other Thursday morning results, Australia’s Team Helen Williams (2-2) toppled Mexico’s Team Adriana Camarena (0-4) 10-2; China defeated New Zealand’s Team Bridget Becker (0-4) 10-4; and Team Tabitha Peterson of the United States (4-0) scored two in the 10th end for a 6-5 win over Japan’s Team Satsuki Fujisawa (2-2). Brad Jacobs’ Canadian men’s team from Calgary (4-0), meanwhile, can nail down a berth in Saturday’s 3 p.m. semifinals with a win Thursday at 3 p.m. against Australia’s Team Hugh Millikin (0-4). Scores, standings and full team lineups are available by CLICKING HERE. All games will be available on World Curling’s streaming platform, The Curling Channel. This story will be posted in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/fr/nouvelles-media/ |
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Northern Ontario's John Epping (Photo: Anil Mungal/GSOC) defeated Northern Ontario's Sandy MacEwen 8-5 at the Henderson Metal Fall Classic presented by Kioti Tractors of Ontario in Sault Ste.
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