Team Homan makes history: First women's team to defeat elite men's team at a Grand Slam of Curling event

History has been made at the Elite 10, in Victoria.

A women's curling team has defeated a top world-ranked men's squad at a Grand Slam of Curling competition, marking the first time that has happened at a sanctioned, elite-level, non-exhibition tour event in Canada and the first since The Slam was taken over by Sportsnet in 2012.

(Note: an earlier edition of this column did not include mention of Kelley Law's two wins at The Masters in 2001, against local teams that were added to the event merely to round out the field)

Ontario skip Rachel Homan, along with teammates Emma Miskew, Joanne Courtney and Lisa Weagle defeated Alberta's Charley Thomas by a score of one-up, in match play scoring. (As opposed to the usual way of scoring - tallying the points scored in all ends for each team - the Elite 10 determines winners by the number of ends they win in a game. In this game, Homan's team took two ends, Thomas' team took one, with the rest of seven ends being considered tied or "pushed." The eighth and final end finished with handshakes as Homan did not need to throw her final stone.)

Moments after Team Homan's win, the Twitterverse weighed in with lots of love for the Ottawa-based rink, which lost its first two games of this event before breaking through against Thomas, whose team is ranked 12th on the World Curling Tour's year-to-date Order of Merit men's standings.

The Elite 10 is classified as a men's event, with the other nine teams in the field being male. Homan's team is the top women's curling team on the World Tour this season and they were invited by organizers to take part after their schedule opened up when they were upset in the Ontario Scotties final, back in January.

Homan's team dropped its first two games of the event, to Ontario's John Epping and Manitoba's Reid Carruthers, on Thursday. In the first game, against Canadian Open winner Epping, Homan's team shot a dismal 62%, with Homan herself booking an eye-popping low score of 33%. She and her teammates struggled with draw weight and line in that game, with Homan facing extremely difficult shots time and time again.

Against Carruthers, they improved in that they took the game to the full eight ends. However, the rink's shooting numbers remained low, at 77%, with Homan bumping up to a still very low 57%. She faced more than a few difficult situations in that game as well, including one during the final end, when she was forced to attempt a difficult in-off shot that, realistically, had very little chance of succeeding.

Against the Thomas rink - including D.J. Kidby, Branden Klassen and fill-in player Matt Dunstone - Team Homan must have really found the range. As a team, they shot 92%, with the skip booking a 97%, including a quadruple takeout

“I feel like we’re starting to pick up on the ice and the rules and the strategy behind it," Miskew told Sportsnet's Jonathan Brazeau. "Also the fact that the men have another element to the game that we’re just a little bit behind on the sweeping and that’s just the physical differences."

What this means for the world of competitive curling, going ahead, is anyone's guess. However, if Homan's team can knock off Brad Gushue's number-one ranked men's team in a game Friday afternoon (3 p.m. PT, Sportsnet), anyone who was inclined to say that Friday morning's victory was a fluke of some kind would have to eat those words.

For her part, Homan has previously expressed the hope that her team's appearance at the Elite 10 might lead to more competitions consisting of both men's and women's teams.

“Maybe this’ll lead to a mixed tournament down the road, kinda once a year," she said on the day her team accepted its invitation to this event. "And that’d be great for the sport. For now, we’re honoured to be included in the event. If we win a couple of games, awesome."

Halfway their to that goal, for Team Homan. Even if they don't win "a couple," they've still made their mark as the first women's team to defeat a men's squad at a tour event.