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Rachel Homan’s intense gaze disappeared and a smile beamed as her final shot of the calendar connected to run Kerri Einarson out of rocks in the Boost National women’s final. A rather routine shot to finish a year that was anything but.

Homan’s decisive 4-1 victory earlier this month in Conception Bay South, N.L., was about more than just claiming her ninth Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling women’s championship and matching Jennifer Jones for the most all time. It also closed the book on a whirlwind 2018 for her Ottawa-based club, which also includes third Emma Miskew, second Joanne Courtney and lead Lisa Weagle.

And what a roller-coaster for Team Homan with the heartbreak of returning from the Winter Olympics empty-handed to returning to glory by finishing the year winning back-to-back Grand Slams.

“We’ve worked really hard this year,” Homan said. “Obviously, a little bit disappointing after the Olympics. We didn’t do as well as we wanted to do for Canada, so we’re working as hard as ever and want to keep pushing the game and keep pushing ourselves. We’re just having a lot of fun right now.”

It was anything but fun at the start of the year although you couldn’t have asked for a better entry into 2018. Team Homan was coming off of the high from earning the right to wear the Maple Leaf just weeks before the Christmas break at the Roar of the Rings on home ice. Electric chants of “Let’s go Homan!” and “Great shot!” from their family, friends and legions of fans echoed throughout Canadian Tire Centre as they were practically perfect that week sustaining just one loss in the opening draw to Chelsea Carey’s crew before winning nine straight including an avenging 6-5 victory over Carey in the final.

Even if you had to handpick a team to send to the Olympics, Team Homan would be the one as the reigning world champions who ran the table to gold in China. Competing for Canada at the Winter Olympics almost seemed like destiny for Homan, who had been a prodigy of the sport since racking up championships in bantam and keeping up with the (Jennifer) Joneses of the curling world as a teenager buzzing on the bonspiel circuit. The budding superstar Homan made her Grand Slam debut at the 2009 Players’ Championship — before she had even represented Canada at the world juniors — and qualified for the playoffs to kickstart an impressive streak of 18 consecutive playoff appearances in the elite series.

That Maple Leaf on the back can weigh heavily and the Olympic tournament is a completely different beast when more than just curling fans are invested in your every move and arm-chair analysts suddenly spout curling vernacular like they’re better than you.

Team Homan had the second-best shooting percentage in Pyeongchang and only two of their nine games were decided by more than a couple points — both lopsided victories in their favour — but sometimes being good just isn’t good enough in a game of inches and they happened to come out on the wrong side of the inch too many times finishing with a 4-5 record.

Homan stumbled out of the gate falling to 0-3 early including an unusual 9-8 loss to Denmark (their lone dub of the tournament as they bottomed out at 1-8) that was overshadowed by a burned rock controversy in the fifth end. Denmark players touched a rock while in motion and Homan removed it from play. Curling purists online cried foul as they believed it violated the sacred “spirit of curling” that made the sport distinct from all others even if Homan was playing by the rules.

Canada had never missed the podium in men’s or women’s curling since the 1998 Nagano Winter Games but somebody had to be the first to earn the dubious distinction eventually.

Returning to the familiar confines of the Pinty’s Grand Slam of Curling may have seemed like the perfect remedy for Team Homan to regain their form but it didn’t come easy. It was at the beginning of 2017-18 when you could tell something was off. Team Homan missed the playoffs in back-to-back Grand Slams to start the season and followed that up with quarterfinal exits (i.e. zero playoff wins) in the next two events heading into Pyeongchang.

The Players’ Championship in April was their first event since returning from the Winter Olympics as fallen heroines. Team Homan experimented with Courtney and Weagle switching spots in the throwing order but that didn’t provide any sparks as they continued to slide finishing 0-5 and going winless for the first time ever in a Grand Slam. Suffice to say, once the team hit the ice a few weeks later for the Humpty’s Champions Cup, Weagle and Courtney were back at their regular positions.

By the time the Players’ Championship rolled around, pretty much everyone else had set their rosters for the next season although all was still quiet on the Team Homan front. Would they split up or stick together? It wasn’t until after the event when they announced the latter. The only change they made was parting ways with mental coach Adam Kingsbury and renewing their association with three-time world champion Marcel Rocque following his stint coaching the Chinese National Team.

While the season-ending Humpty’s Champions Cup served as a swan song for many teams, it was also the backdrop for the return to top form for Team Homan. It seemed unlikely at first as they fell to a 1-2 record and were in danger of missing the playoffs once more until they defeated Kristin MacDiarmid’s team to squeeze into a last-chance tiebreaker scenario. Again, their backs were against the walls facing Alina Paetz’s team and needing to score three in the final frame to advance.

The rally continued into the quarterfinals with Homan scoring three in the seventh and stealing two in the eighth for a late 6-3 surge over former teammate Jamie Sinclair. Even the semifinals saw Homan trailing 5-0 after two against Eve Muirhead only to recover with a three-ender in the third followed by a steal of one in the fourth and two in the fifth to pull ahead. A deuce in seven and a steal in eight completed the 9-6 comeback and a ticket to the championship game against Einarson.

A steal of two points in the seventh end proved to be key for the 7-6 win over Einarson.

“It feels really great this year, especially after our performance at the Players’ Championship where we were just a little tired,” Miskew said. “To come back this week and battle through a lot of tough games where we were down in points, it feels really good and really satisfying to know that we can still plug away and win events.”

This was a different kind of Team Homan than we had seen before. Running the table almost became routine in their previous title victories in the series but now they relied on patience and perseverance to pull off some gritty wins.

“In the past, we never really had to win games like that and then when we started to have to, we didn’t know how,” Miskew said. “This week it feels great to finally learn how we can win games that we don’t have control of and find a way to win despite how things are going out there. We weren’t perfect all week, we weren’t playing our very best but we stayed in every game and really tried to find a way to win.”

Amid a run like we haven’t seen from anyone since, well, Team Homan in 2015 when they won three consecutive Grand Slams. As you may recall, however, that run was preceded with a championship loss in the inaugural Tour Challenge women’s final with Homan’s last shot getting lost in the fog of Paradise, N.L., and conceding a critical steal of two points (and the title) to Silvana Tirinzoni. Our story here picks up with a somewhat familiar tale although no fog was present in the Atlantic Canada town (city?) of Truro, N.S., for the Canadian Beef Masters. Homan was up by two points without the hammer in the last end but left the door open on her final shot for Anna Hasselborg to hit for three points.

Just as Homan charged back with a vengeance after the 2015 Tour Challenge, so too did her team following the 2018 Canadian Beef Masters. Homan didn’t leave anyone off of the hook at the Tour Challenge just two weeks later going undefeated at 7-0 to claim the championship.

A team that had fallen into the uncharacteristic position of just being happy to even make the playoffs was hitting their stride once again.

Still, there were some tense moments like in the semifinals against Nina Roth which required Miskew to pull off a triple takeout she probably couldn’t duplicate peeling one guard that redirected another into the house and connected with another and clearing the deck and setting up Homan for the extra-end victory.

“That was shot of the year so far, I think, and the game-winner for sure,” Courtney declared. “She threw it great and Rachel called the line perfectly. Really pumped when she made it.”

The Masters mistake possibly served as a reminder to finish the job and never give up.

“We battled tough all week,” Miskew said. “It’s nice, after the last one especially, to come off and win the next one after the Masters, it’s great.”

“It feels great to hit that consistency again,” Courtney said. “We had spotty performances over the last couple of seasons, especially in the Slams. It feels good to be getting closer to that nice consistent play.”

As Shania Twain blared through CBS Arena signalling another Team Homan title victory, the skip was already plotting the next chapter with a busy back-half to the 2018-19 season ahead after the calendar flips. Right off the bat in January alone Homan has an opportunity to make Grand Slam history at the Meridian Canadian Open — targeting a record-breaking 10th women’s title — followed by provincial playdowns and the long road to represent Canada once again on the world stage. Homan is just heating up this season and her confident competitive fire burns bright.

“We want to try and crack double digits before the year is up and I think we can definitely do that,” Homan said. “We’re excited to set that as our goal and to keep trying to win more games.”