Manitoba’s Jill Officer announced today that she will step away from competitive curling and the team skipped by Jennifer Jones beginning next season.
“I don’t want to call it a retirement because that sounds too final. Who knows what will happen in the future,”said a teary-eyed Officer.
Officer will be replaced by 2012 Canadian Junior champion and Scotties Tournament of Hearts champion, Jocelyn Peterman.
“I've known for a while I would not play another quadrennial, so this was a decision that I've been considering for quite some time, and I finalized my decision before the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, that regardless of the outcome I was stepping back,” said Officer.
Officer said she has communicated with the team numerous times about stepping away from the sport she has more than two decades experience in, and this didn’t come as a surprise to them.
“It’s something I've dedicated my life to and it's hard telling the girls, but in Jen’s perspective, she showed me a tweet that said they’ve only known us as a couple, so it feels like an amicable divorce,” said Officer.
Officer is one of only three Canadian women to ever win six Canadian women's curling championships, along with Jennifer Jones and Nova Scotia curler Colleen Jones. She also won an Olympic gold medal with Jennifer Jones in 2014.
Officer will finish off the current season. This month, she will represent Canada at the 2018 Ford World Women’s Curling Championship in North Bay, Ontario and will be joined by 2018 Olympic gold medalist, Kaitlyn Lawes.
