Officer struggles to sweep curling from her system
Ex-Jones mate not ready to ‘go cold turkey’ after two decades of top-level competition
For someone who has taken a step back from curling, Jill Officer has sure found herself around a lot of high-level events lately.
Officer, a world champion and Olympic gold medallist who played second for Winnipeg ’s Jennifer Jones for more than two decades, announced at the end of last season she would not be a regular member of the team for the next Olympic quadrennial.
The grind of the game was simply too much for the mother of a seven-year-old girl and she simply couldn’t do it anymore.
However, that didn’t mean she wanted a complete departure from the game, the team and the curling community.
“It’s certainly a huge step back from what I was doing, but I also knew I couldn’t kind of go cold turkey,” said Officer, a 43-yearold known as one of the best seconds to play the game.
“I just said that I couldn’t make the four-year commitment, but I would be willing to help out the team and be part of it and be the fifth player. Part of what I wanted to still do with curling was some travel as well as just staying connected to the game and the people on tour. It’s all I’ve known for almost 15 years. It would be hard to completely cut myself off from what has become my community.”
As such, Officer found herself travelling to China last month to fill in for lead Dawn McEwen as the Jones team earned a bronze medal at the China Open.
Officer will also play with the team at a World Cup event in Sweden in January and intends to play in four events in total over the course of the season. She’ll also play in a few mixed doubles events.
“One of my goals was to keep my connection to my team because, again, that’s all I’ve known for so long,” she said. “It would have been a lot weirder to not have any sort of connection with them or with curling in general.”
It has certainly helped that Officer has signed on with CBC to provide colour commentary during four Grand Slam of Curling events this season.
Her first gig was last month at the Masters in Truro, N.S.
Officer studied communications in college and has a background in journalism and broadcasting, having worked as a TV reporter.
“I thought that maybe it would be natural transition for me,” Officer said.
As luck would have it, she called a Masters quarter-final matchup between Jones and Sweden’s Anna Hasselborg.
“Oh yeah, it was the very first one,” Officer said with a laugh.
“It was a little weird not warming up with everybody and being out on the ice, but it was great to catch up with some people and spend some time in that atmosphere again.”
While she is keeping her hand in the game and will serve as the fifth player for Jones at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Sydney, N.S., in February, Officer has no intention of returning full time to the team or the rigours of Olympic qualifying.
“Knowing that this is a permanent thing, it’s certainly weird,” Officer said.
“Sometimes it nags at me a little bit to want to be out there, but then I remember all the other stuff that comes with it and that reminds me of why it was that I stepped away in the first place.
“Whether I ever go back to any sort of competitive play or not, it remains to be seen. But right now it’s an ideal situation for me to play a little bit of mixed doubles, fill in a little bit so I get a bit of the competition and I’m still around the curling and connected, but I’m not feeling the same pressure or expectation to do everything else that comes with it like training and endless practice and those types of things.”
MIXING IT UP
The 2019 Canadian Mixed Curling Championship is in Winnipeg this week with 14 provincial teams vying for the right to represent the country at the world championship next year. Canada’s Michael Anderson and his Ontario team won the world title in Kelowna, B.C., last month.
The event in Winnipeg is flying under the radar a bit, coming so quickly on the heels of the world championship, but the traditional mixed game is certainly benefiting from having an international goal to pursue.
“What I’m seeing is, from an international standpoint, it’s probably a developmental event for some of the smaller nations,” said Officer, a two-time Manitoba mixed champion who did colour commentary at nationals. “Spain was in the final against Canada at that world championship and we’ve never seen Spain on the world stage at such a high level before. Because there is a world championship now it makes the Canadian championship a little more interesting.”