Team Jacobs raises Canada’s record to 2-0 at 2025 Pan Continental Championships

VIRGINIA, Minn. — Calgary’s Team Brad Jacobs is continuing the building process that it hopes will carry it all the way to the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Another step — small, but still significant — was taken Tuesday afternoon at the 2025 United States Steel Pan Continental Curling Championships, as Jacobs’ Canadian reps turned back the Philippines’ Team Marc Pfister 10-3 to improve to 2-0 in early men’s round-robin play.

The primary goal this week, of course, is to win Canada’s third men’s gold medal at this event, which will cease to exist after this season.

But Jacobs, vice-skip Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert, alternate Tyler Tardi, team coach Paul Webster, national coach Jeff Stoughton also are hoping to leave Minnesota in six days not only with gold around their necks, but also with more confidence heading to the 2025 Montana’s Canadian Curling Trials, presented by Connect Hearing, beginning Nov. 22 in Halifax.

And, don’t forget, a solid week of playing under the same rules they’ll be facing in Halifax and, potentially, beyond

“I think some of the big pluses for this event for us is there’s 10 ends of curling (unlike eight-end games used at Grand Slam events),” said Gallant, who actually faced Pfister, then representing Switzerland, at the 2009 World Junior Championships in Vancouver. “There’s extra ends. There’s no different blank rules, and so it’s normal curling, and that’s what the Trials are going to be, and so it’s actually really nice prep for us to be playing an event like this.”

The Canadians were in control against a rapidly rising Philippines team, that will take its own shot at qualifying for the Winter Olympics in December at the Olympic Qualification Event in Kelowna, B.C.

Team Jacobs was sound defensively, holding the Philippines to singles in the second, sixth and eighth ends, and taking advantage of misses to score deuces in the first and seventh ends, and putting the game away when Jacobs made an open hit for four in the ninth.

“You know what? I think just from lead to skip we played quite well,” said Jacobs. “Benny was setting the ends up beautifully and that always makes it a lot easier from that point on. So I think I would give player of the game to Ben.”

Jacobs also pointed to the on-ice communication that has been a team priority early this season after some time-clock issues that affected the team in its first full season together a year ago. Working with Ottawa sports psychologist Jason Boivin has been a key element of producing more efficient and productive communication, said Jacobs.

“Our theme so far this season has been about learning,” he said. “We’ve had some really good discussions as a team and with Jason on the way here, and we really think that we figured a few things out in order to streamline our communication and improve it. Communication, clock management, game planning, decisive decision-making, certainty — these are words that we talk about all the time as a team and that all of that stuff helps with the time clock.”

It’s a two-game day Wednesday for Team Jacobs. First up is a 10 a.m. (all times Eastern) assignment against South Korea’s Team Soo-Hyuk Kim (1-1), followed by an 8 p.m. game against New Zealand’s Team Sean Becker (0-2).

In other Tuesday afternoon games, China’s Team Xiaoming Xu (1-1) rolled to an 8-2 win over New Zealand’s Team Sean Becker (0-2); John Shuster’s United States team (2-0) was a 7-3 winner over South Korea’s Team Soo-Hyuk Kim (1-1); and Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi (1-1) got past Australia’s Hugh Millikin (0-2) 9-3.

Coming off a loss to Japan Tuesday morning in its opening game, Canada’s Team Rachel Homan returns to action in women’s round-robin play Tuesday at 8 p.m. against New Zealand’s Team Bridget Becker (0-1).

Scores, standings and full team lineups are available by CLICKING HERE.

All games will be available on World Curling’s streaming platform, The Curling Channel.

This story will be posted in French as soon as possible at www.curling.ca/fr/nouvelles-media/