THUNDER BAY, Ont. — Jill Brothers had a smile on her face and the Nova Scotia third shook her head and repeated “yeah” four times before she captured how she was feeling just after her team punched a ticket to the semifinal of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
This is Brothers’ eighth Scotties, Saturday was her first playoff game, and her team went ahead and won it.
“I’ve been curling for a very long time, so to achieve this step is pretty incredible,” the 41-year-old Brothers said with a grin. “But we’ve still got more work to do, so I need a really good rest right now.”
Brothers sure earned it, too. On Saturday afternoon, she curled a team-high 89 per cent for the Bluenosers, setting up a giant end in the ninth to give skipper Christina Black a chance to score a pivotal three in a rollercoaster game against Team Alberta that ended with an 8-7 Nova Scotia win.
“I’m so proud of us,” Black said when it was over. “I can’t believe it — we’re just playing so good.”
The win sets up for the five-woman team of Black, Brothers, Jennifer Baxter, Marlee Powers and lead Karlee Everist to play the loser of Saturday night’s showdown between Team Canada’s Rachel Homan and four-time Scotties champion Kerri Einarson and her Manitoba rink (the winner of that matchup goes straight to Sunday’s final).
Baxter started Saturday’s game at second for Nova Scotia, but left the ice after the second end. Baxter was there until the end of the game, but may not play in the semifinal due to a family emergency, according to coach Stuart MacLean.
“We’re just focusing on the curling,” he said. “We’ve had, you know, adversities with scheduling and stuff this year before…They managed to pull out against another adversity, and hopefully we’ll carry on doing that.”
Powers came in on Saturday in the third end. “She was amazing,” Black said. “Comes in cold, makes a draw, then makes the best hit-and-roll we’ve seen all year.”
For Black, Sunday is a second trip to the Scotties semifinal, but her first while playing skip.
“It feels great to be back in it,” the 37-year-old said, and it was her expectation, too. Black’s team is ranked No. 4 in Canada, and went in here with its sights set on playoffs. A couple years ago on this stage in Kamloops in 2023, Black upset Homan to earn her way to the 3-4 page playoff game, before losing to Einarson. It was that very game Black and Nova Scotia managed to win this year, this time against Team Alberta’s Kayla Skrlik.
“I felt the whole game that we were in control, and then in eight, my first rock picked and I was like, ‘Oh come on.’ Are things turning right now for us?” Black said.
On her last shot of the end, the skipper missed a double that would’ve held Alberta to a single point, instead allowing Skrlik to float in another rock to score three. That gave Alberta its first advantage of the game, and a 6-5 lead heading into the ninth end, with hammer coming home.
“The eighth is not a great time have a ‘suck,’” Brothers said. “But there was no panic.”
“I said, ‘All right guys, we’ve been in this position before,’” Black said, and it didn’t take Team Nova Scotia long to turn the tide.
Brothers set things up. “I just felt like I was playing so well. I’m like, ‘OK, if you want me to freeze to this, I’ll freeze to this,’” she said.
Skrlik’s last knocked off a Nova Scotia stones and left them sitting two, and Black made the draw for three. Just like that, Nova Scotia was back in control, up 8-6 heading into the final end.
Skrlik needed a pair to force the extra, and a miracle shot on her last to take out four Nova Scotia rocks and stick her own. The Alberta skip fired that rock down the ice with incredible force and rattled a few of them around, but couldn’t pull off the miracle.
After shaking hands, Black threw her broom on the blue floor, and she and her teammates jumped and hugged together.
“They’re reaching their goals, one by one, as we go,” said MacLean, who points to Black’s incredible head for the game as one of her greatest assets. “The sky’s the limit for her, and for this team.”
Black began skipping her own team for the 2020-21 season, and last September, she brought in Brothers, a long-time skipper herself, to play third. “When she called up and said, ‘Do you want to play third?’ I was just like, ‘Oh, yeah. Definitely.’ Who else in Nova Scotia is more obsessed with curling than me? Christina,” Brothers said.
“She’s been playing lights out, that girl,” Black said, of Brothers. “She always said she’d be a great third and she was right. She’s unreal.”
Nova Scotia will need to continue to play unreal here, because up next is either the top team in the world (Homan) or the No. 2 team in Canada (Einarson). But Brothers says it doesn’t matter who her team faces next.
“Playing like that?” she said, just after their latest win. “I like our chances.”
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