Team Koe’s run ends in Players’ Championship quarterfinals
SUMMERSIDE, P.E.I. — Calgary’s Team Koe gave one final wave to the crowd after their final tournament together came to an end on Saturday.
The reigning Brier champions fell 7-6 to Brad Jacobs and his Olympic gold medal-winning squad from Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., during the Players’ Championship quarterfinals, the final Grand Slam of Curling event of the season.
Kevin Koe will guide a new crew in the fall with Brent Laing from Team Howard and Marc Kennedy and Ben Hebert from Team Martin while Nolan Thiessen, Carter Rycroft and Pat Simmons plan to stick together and begin their search for a new skip.
“It sucks because this weekend we were at high hopes and we played pretty well today,” Thiessen said. “We battled as hard as we could and we just didn’t have it. We got beat by a great team and it sucks because it’s the end of an era with Kevin.”
Jacobs broke a 2-2 tie with a steal of one in the third and that extra point proved to be the difference-maker down the stretch as the two teams battled back and forth trading deuces through the second half. It all came down to Jacobs holding the hammer in the final end and not making a mistake to grab the game-winning two count.
Thiessen and Rycroft joined Koe in 2006 winning the Brier and world championships in 2010 with Blake MacDonald at vice. Simmons came on board in 2011 when MacDonald retired and helped them win two Grand Slam titles — the 2012 Masters and the 2013 Canadian Open — and another Brier title this past March.
“I’ve played eight years, probably 900 games with him and that’s the end of it,” Thiessen said. “We’ll move on and see what happens next year.”