Canada’s Team Jacobs advances to men’s final at Pan Continental Championships

VIRGINIA, Minn. — Organizers are getting the men’s gold-medal game they were hoping for at the 2025 United States Steel Pan Continental Curling Championships.

It will be Canada’s Team Brad Jacobs pitted against the local boys, Team John Shuster of the United States after they claimed semifinal victories Saturday afternoon at the Iron Trail Motors Event Center in Virginia, Minn.

The same teams put on a thrilling round-robin game Friday night in front of a packed house, with Canada prevailing in an extra end, and Jacobs, vice-skip Marc Kennedy, second Brett Gallant, lead Ben Hebert, alternate Tyler Tardi, team coach Paul Webster and national coach Jeff Stoughton are expecting more of the same in Sunday’s 1:30 p.m. (all times Eastern) gold-medal finale.

“I really just hope that everybody comes out and fills up these stands and we have a great atmosphere just like we did on Friday night,” said Jacobs. “The nice thing is we have hammer (in the first end); we’re going to throw everything that we have at them, we’re going to be totally immersed and engaged in that game and hopefully that’s going to lead to a lot of shots and putting a bunch of points on the board for us against the hometown team.”

The reigning Montana’s Brier champs from Calgary certainly were provided a stiff test in Saturday’s semi, a nailbiter that went down to the wire before Canada pulled out a 5-4 victory over China’s Team Xiaoming Xu, sparked by a perfect shooting game from Kennedy.

“That was a great test for us,” said Jacobs. “China played awesome, they gave us everything that we could handle. The boys played great in front of me, and obviously Marc throwing 100 per cent; if he doesn’t do that, boy, we might not win that game. Those are the types of games that coming here we wanted to be in, so it’s nice to come out on top.”

It was a see-saw game throughout, a display of skilled shot-making in crucial situations, particularly by the two skips, who constantly bailed their respective teams out of trouble over the first eight ends.

The teams went back and forth trading single points, and Xu in particular had to make some stellar shots under pressure — in the fourth, a hit-and-roll to bite the button with Canada laying three; in the sixth, drawing to bite the four-foot against five Canadian counters, and then in the eighth to bite a big piece of the button after Jacobs made a wonderful hit-and-roll buried to bite the button.

In the ninth, it was a wonderful triple takeout by Kennedy that set up a crucial blank for Canada to carry the hammer into the 10th of what was a 4-4 game.

And in the 10th, the Canadian were able to control the four-foot and, finally, Xu didn’t have an answer.

“We had to battle hard to win that game, which is good, that’s why we’re here,” said Hebert. “We want to get battle tested with the Maple Leaf on our back — that’s kind of what it’s all about. We had to be really sharp and that’s good because we’re going to have to play really sharp to beat Shoosty.

“We’re going to be in their barn, we’re going to be in enemy territory but that’s going to be nothing new for us — we’ve got to go to Newfoundland for the Brier this year (and face Team Brad Gushue on its home ice). Hopefully we can take the crowd out of it early and keep playing our game. We’ll see if we can snag a deuce and control that scoreboard, but we know they’re going to come out firing and we just got to weather the storm and do our thing.”

In the other semifinal, the U.S. broke open a tight game by scoring three in the fifth end and five more in the seventh en route to a 9-3 win over Japan’s Team Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi.

China and Japan will play for bronze Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

The women’s semifinals are set for 8 p.m. Saturday, with Canada’s Team Rachel Homan facing off with Team Tabitha Peterson of the United States in one semi, while Team Rui Wang of China plays South Korea’s Team Eunji Kim in the other.

The winners will play for gold Sunday at 5:30 p.m., while the losers play for bronze Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

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/