Team Manitoba-Jones skip Jennifer Jones directs her teammates as they play Team Alberta in qualifications at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Calgary, Alta., Friday, Feb. 23, 2024.Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press
Curling dragged a shy introvert into the spotlight because she was so good at the sport.
Jennifer Jones chronicles her evolution from the youngster who snuck out of the St. Vital Curling Club daycare to sit behind the glass and watch her parents throw stones to international stardom in Rock Star: My Life On and Off the Ice released Tuesday by HarperCollins.
The Winnipeg skip who led her teams to an Olympic gold medal, two world championships and six Canadian titles wrote the memoir after retiring from team curling in 2024.
“It was really actually almost therapeutic for me to go through all the stories,” Jones said. “I was sad, a little bit sad, about leaving curling, and it was a really good year to just kind of go through and reflect and reminisce on all the incredible memories.”
The 51-year-old didn’t keep a journal so she leaned on the memories of former teammates Jill Officer, Kaitlyn Lawes and Dawn McEwen — the foursome went undefeated en route to Olympic gold in 2014 — to help prod her own.
Jones wrote that curling allowed her to grow from the shy girl who preferred to be in the back row of a crowd into a leader that stood at the front and made tough decisions.
Some of those tough decisions weren’t popular. Jones wrote of her sometimes adversarial relationship with media, and what she felt was unfair treatment after her team fired third Cathy Overton-Clapham in 2010.
Jones was coming off a Canadian championship victory that rewarded her team with a return ticket to the tournament the following year as Team Canada, so the move raised eyebrows in the curling community.
Jones doesn’t delve into the decision in her book, but spends time on the reaction to it. She says she wanted the book to be about her journey as a person.
Manitoba skip Jennifer Jones delivers a rock while playing Team Canada during the final at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Kamloops, B.C., on Sunday, February 26, 2023.DARRYL DYCK
“It’s more of a my life story, the impact on me, what I went through in my mind, how I felt during the experience, and if there’s anything that I might do differently, which is kind of how I approached it,” Jones explained.
“I tried to be vulnerable in the book and kind of really expose how I was feeling and how I evolved over time and it was definitely a personal growth story over those number of years.”
Of the stellar shots Jones made over the years to become one of the best curlers Canada has ever produced, her walk-off in-off to claim her first Canadian championship in St, John’s, N.L., in 2005 is still in heavy rotation on curling’s top-10 shots list.
Jones whipped her final stone of the 10th end off an opposing rock well outside the rings to roll to the button and remove another opposition stone for the victory.
She recounts in detail “The Shot Heard Round The World” in the book because she’s still asked about it today by curling fans.
“That shot deserved an entire chapter because it was really the whole kick-start to the career, but just the behind-the-scenes, what I was feeling, what was going through my brain, my body, just the emotions of it all and trying to give the fans or the people reading the book a real understanding of the emotions that you feel in those big moments,” Jones said.
“That shot changed everything … basically in my life. It gave me confidence to maybe pursue curling in a way that I didn’t know if I would.”
Juggling law school and a law career and finding love and motherhood while pursuing a sport that requires continuous travel to be the best in the world are among the themes running through the book.
“It’s more of a lifestyle book in terms of being a successful lawyer, being a successful curler, having children, what that means, and trying to incorporate everything in, and as I say in the book, be where my feet are and really try to enjoy the moment,” Jones said.
