Jones taps young champion Lawes for new third

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This article was published 24/04/2010 (5957 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones traded experience and a steady hand for youth and ambition with the announcement on Friday that 21-year-old Kaitlyn Lawes will be taking over next winter for Cathy Overton-Clapham as third on the three-time defending Canadian women’s curling champion.

Jones made the announcement about Lawes just one day after making sports headlines from coast to coast with the announcement she had cut Overton-Clapham, the winningest female curler in Manitoba history, from her enormously successful team.

Winnipeg’s Lawes is 20 years younger than 41-year-old Overton-Clapham and is no stranger to curling at the highest levels. Lawes won Canadian junior titles for Manitoba in 2008 and 2009 and went on to win bronze and silver representing Canada at the world juniors in those years, respectively.

She has since graduated to the adult ranks. She curled third last winter with Edmonton’s Cathy King. That team played in a qualifying tournament in November 2009 for the Canadian Curling Trials but did not advance.

“I’m honoured and very excited to curl with this team. It’s going to be very exciting,” Lawes said Friday from Edmonton. “Hopefully, we can build and grow together.”

Lawes said she was contacted by the Jones team “at the end of the season” about taking over from Overton-Clapham, who wasn’t informed of the decision until she was cut by Jones at a team meeting Wednesday.

Overton-Clapham had harsh words Thursday for the way she was dismissed by Jones, saying she was blindsided by the decision and it strips her of perks as a player on Team Canada.

Lawes will move back to Winnipeg and will now inherit those perks, including the right to defend the Canadian title as Team Canada at next February’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts and berths in the lucrative Canada Cup and Continental Cup, events that automatically go to the defending Canadian champion.

Jones, a beloved Canadian champion but also a polarizing figure in the genteel curling world, where her sometimes ruthless personnel moves over the years have rankled purists, has been getting overwhelmingly negative comments for the move on Internet discussion boards.

Jones said in an interview Friday that the timing is all about the future and beginning the long process of pointing her team towards the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

“It was a very difficult decision and Cathy is a very good friend,” Jones said. “But it’s right after the season and it is the beginning of the next (Olympic) cycle.

“There’s no question Cathy is a great player… But we were looking ahead and looking forward and felt we needed to change it up a little bit and bring some new energy to the team.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca