Jennifer Jones and her Team Canada foursome are into the championship round at the Scotties Tournament Of Hearts in Sydney, N.S.
Despite losing their final game of pool play, Jones and company still clinched a berth in the next round after the Northwest Territories (Kerry Galusha) lost their final game.
With Jill Officer filling in for Jocelyn Peterman in their first game of the day, Canada defeated Newfoundland/Labrador’s Kelli Sharpe 8-4 in draw 12. That guaranteed them no worse than a spot in a tiebreaker game with one game left to play in pool play.
READ MORE: Jennifer Jones drops stunner in 8-6 loss to PEI’s Suzanne Birt at Scotties
Jones went back to her usual lineup and was then defeated by the Wild Cards skipped by Casey Scheidegger in Thursday’s late draw. Jones gave up steals in three different ends in a 7-4 defeat to close out pool play. They finished the round with a 4-3 record which turned out to be good enough to advance without a tiebreaker.
The Northwest Territories suffered a 13-6 loss to Yukon’s Nicole Baldwin for a 3-4 record to just miss the cut in Pool B. In addition to Team Canada, the Wild Cards, Saskatchewan (Robyn Silvernagle), and Prince Edward Island (Suzanne Birt) all advanced out of the pool.
In the other pool, Manitoba’s Tracy Fleury will need to win a tiebreaker for the eighth and final spot in the championship pool. They dropped a 7-5 decision to Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville. Manitoba finished the preliminary round with a 4-3 record for a share of fourth place in Pool A.
They’ll play British Columbia’s Sarah Wark in a winner-take-all tiebreaker game on Thursday morning.
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Alberta (Chelsea Carey), Ontario (Rachel Homan), and Northern Ontario have already secured their place in the next round out of Pool A.