Team Jacobs rebounds for key wins at Brier

In the blink of an eye, Team Northern Ontario, which consists of Sault Ste. Marie’s Brad Jacobs and his team from the Community First Curling Centre, is back in the mix at the 2020 Tim Hortons Brier in Kingston, Ont.

After dropping to 1-3 on Monday night with a loss to Newfoundland and Labrador’s Brad Gushue, the Jacobs rink rebounded with a pair of wins on Tuesday to move to 3-3.

The Jacobs rink, which includes third Marc Kennedy, second E.J. Harnden, lead Ryan Harnden, and alternate Lee Toner picked up wins over Quebec’s Alek Bedard and Jamie Murphy of Nova Scotia.

Jacobs called the win over Bedard “a great performance” in an interview posted on the Curling Canada website.

With the hammer to start, Jacobs jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the opening end.

After Bedard blanked the second and scored one in the third to get on the board, Jacobs took over.

The Jacobs rink increased the lead with a pair in the fourth to go up 4-1 then picked up steals of one each in the fifth and sixth ends before stealing three in the seventh to go up 9-1.

Bedard capped off the scoring with a single in the eighth end.

Jacobs spoke of the start to the tournament being interesting as the northern Ontario rink sat with a 1-3 record entering Tuesday despite playing well.

“It was kind of a funny start for us,” Jacobs said. “Things just didn’t go our way. We didn’t play poorly and we’re not throwing the rock poorly. We’re throwing the rock very well and we’re just on the wrong side of the inch.”

“A little bit of adversity early on in events is never a bad thing,” Jacobs also said. “We’re been a pretty resilient team all year and we welcome that.”

In the evening draw, the Jacobs rink beat Murphy 6-2.

After blanking the opening end, Jacobs got on the board in the second end with a pair and, after Murphy blanked the third and scored a single in the fourth, added to the lead with two more in the fifth end.

Murphy scored one in the seventh end before Jacobs sealed the win with two in the ninth end.

“Our life was on the line and we put together a really good day,” Kennedy said in an interview with Curling Canada. “We didn’t have a lot of panic. We just came out and did our thing and played really well both games.”

Heading into the final day of round robin action on Wednesday, the Jacobs rink will face Nunavut’s Jake Higgs.

Round robin action in the nine-day event wraps up on Wednesday night.

Following action on Wednesday, the top four teams in each of the eight-team pools will move on to the Championship Pool, which begins on Thursday afternoon and will see the eight teams carry over their records from round robin action.

Following two days of Championship Pool action, the top four teams will move on to the playoff round, which begins with Page Playoff action on Saturday afternoon.