SCHUMACHER—The Jakubo curling rink, including Manitoulin’s own Jordan Chandler, made their mark at the Travelers 2014 Northern Ontario Curling Association (NOCA) Men’s Provincials this past weekend in Schumacher, but lost in the semi-finals 5-4 to the Currie rink who went on to win the finals and will be representing Northern Ontario at the Tim Hortons Brier March 1-9 in Kamloops.
The Jakubo rink includes vice Jordon Chandler of Billings, skip Mike Jakubo, second Sandy MacEwen and lead Lee Toner.
Jakubo had a tough first draw losing to Adams Jr. 5-8 but came back strong their second draw 9-4 against the Bonot rink. Their winning streak continued into the third draw, beating the Johnston rink 8-5. Unfortunately, they had a tough break against Gordon, losing 6-8 and again in the fifth draw 6-8 against the Lemieux rink and the sixth draw 5-7 to the Currie rink. By the seventh draw team Jakubo worked their way to a win, beating the Burgess rink 8-7, spinning the team into a tie breaker with the Johnston rink which Mr. Chandler’s team won 7-6 and against the Gordon rink, which they won 7-5, moving them to the semi-finals against the Currie rink.
It was a close game, but team Currie arose the victors 5-4, moving on to the finals beating the Adams Jr. rink 9-4 to move onto the Brier.
“We had a slow start,” explained Mr. Chandler of the provincials. “We really shouldn’t have lost the first two games, but that’s just what happened. Mike (Jakubo) made a lot of really great shots to get us to the semi-finals and we were really controlling the game. The final shot was very makeable—a shot that we would make 99 percent of the time—we just had to remove their stone (from the button) for the win, but we missed it by a quarter inch.”
Mr. Chandler said that despite his team’s loss, he was pleased by their efforts and looks forwards to another shot at the Brier next year.
