(by Larry Wood)
What’s in Jennifer Jones’s wallet now? Another berth in the Canadian Olympic curling trials leading to the Sochi Games, that’s what!
Jones absolutely demolished a much less experienced Manitoba foe in Chelsea Carey on Sunday morning in the women’s championship final of the Capital One Canada Cup at the Cranbrook RecPlex.
Team Jones wins the 2011 Capital One Canada Cup
The match ended 9-4 in favour of Jones and her team of Kaitlyn Lawes, Joelle Sabourin and Dawn Askin but the issue had been decided long before handshakes after eight ends.
The win earned the Jones team $26,000, plus the Tim Hortons Trials berth, plus entries to next year’s Canada Cup at Moose Jaw and the 2013 Continental Cup at Penticton, B.C.
“We were never really looking that far ahead,” said the 37-year-old Jones, a four-time national champion who scored at 94 per cent on her skip rocks in the lopsided match. “But it is nice; this way, you don’t really have to go all out (for the next two seasons). You can control your schedule and pick the events you want to play in, which is kind of nice. We know we’re there, we won’t have to keep looking at the points standings to see how we rank, and hopefully we’ll get better until then.”