Jones, Laing Out Of Doubles Curling Playoffs

The 2024 Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship heads into its final two days with the defending champions eliminated from the playoffs.

Jennifer Jones and Brent Laing, the 2023 winners, were mired at 1-3 early in the week in Fredericton, N.B. and won their next two games to get to 3-3.

Then came a final Pool C match loss, 5-4, to British Columbia champions Taylor Reese-Hansen and Corey Chester of Victoria.

That loss ended the Jones/Laing combo’s playoff hopes, while the left coasters ended up with a 6-1 won/loss record to win their pool.

Jones announced her impending retirement from women’s four-player team curling shortly before her silver medal performance at the Canadian women’s championship.

Reese-Hansen and Chester stole critical singles in the sixth and seventh ends, the first on a long raise.

The competitors, 32 pairs in total, competed at both an arena venue and a curling club up to the playoff round.

“We’re starting to embrace the ice,” said Chester. “We had some close, pretty scrappy, games earlier in the week at the arena. Then we went to the curling club and played two of our best games of the season.

“We wanted to carry some of that momentum back to the arena. It turned out to be great timing.”

Six years into the mixed doubles discipline’s official Olympic status, scorelines can still shock casual curling fans.

One such example was the final round robin tilt between Quebec’s Laurie St. Georges and Felix Asselin and their opponents from Minnedosa, Man., Chaelynn Kitz and Brayden Stewart.

The Quebecers scored five in the first end, held leads of 6-3 and 7-4 but lost 10-9 after dropping three-counts in the sixth and eighth ends.

Both squads finished out of the playoffs at 4-3.

Manitoba’s Kadriana and Colton Lott are one of only two undefeated pairs (7-0) heading into today’s quarterfinals. They will play the winner of this afternoon’s playoff between Lisa Weagle and John Epping (4-3 in Pool C) and Nancy Martin and Steve Laycock of Saskatchewan (5-2 in Pool B).

Also 7-0 is the team of Laura Walker and Kirk Muyres, who will face the winner of Amanda and Aaron Sluchinski (4-3, Airdrie, Alta.) and the throw-together pairing of hometowner Andrea Kelly and British Columbia’s Tyler Tardi.

Tardi’s regular mixed doubles teammate, Rachel Homan, is somewhat busy with a world women’s championship in Sydney, N.S. and recruited Kelly shortly before the event. The new team won their first four games in a row and finished Pool A with a 5-2 record.

Edmonton’s Paige Papley and Evan Van Amsterdam (5-2 in Pool B) will take on the winner of former champions Jocelyn Peterman and Brett Gallant (5-2 in Pool D) and the Guelph, Ont. duo of Riley Sandham and Brendan Craig (4-3 in Pool C).

Reese-Hansen and Chester await in the final quarterfinal for the winner of the daughter-father combo of Jaelyn and Jim Cotter (Vernon, B.C., 4-3 in Pool B) and the Kleiter siblings from Saskatoon, Madison and Rylan, who finished 5-2 in Pool A.