Spunky skip struggles early, finds game in late ends

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/10/2015 (3966 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don’t let the title throw you: Colleen Jones’ biography is more than just a roarin’ good curling yarn.

Sure, it features a main character Canadians either love or… don’t. But add some record-breaking accomplishments, the odd team breakup, a career in TV broadcast booths, a few family tragedies plus Jones’ recent health scare and you’ve got a movie-of-the-week storyboard.

However, this time the 56-year-old Jones, who wrote Curling Secrets: How To Think & Play Like a Pro in 2007, isn’t out to fix our problematic curling mechanics. Rather, a good chunk of this memoir plays to the life-coach guru many of us seek.

The message — life is short, make the most of it — isn’t clichéd and chirpy, though; it’s insightful and authentic, which typically comes from having experience as one’s teacher. Too bad Jones’ best a-ha moments come in the book’s final pages.

If you don’t know the effervescent Jones’ CV by heart, Throwing Rocks will enlighten.

Born in Halifax to non-curling parents, Jones is one of nine children, and began curling at age 14. Driven to master the sport, she won the first of her 16 provincial women’s curling titles five years later. In 1982, at age 22, she became the youngest skip to win the Scott Tournament of Hearts, the Canadian women’s curling championship — a record that still stands.

She claimed the Scotties crown six times, including four consecutive wins in the early 2000s. That timeframe also saw Jones win two women’s world curling championships while juggling career, marriage and child-rearing.

Following a few attempts at retiring from competitive curling and successfully battling meningitis in 2010, Jones finally hung up her slider in 2013. She credits her “mental toughness” for smoothing the typical bumps and blips of her 30-plus-year career as a Canadian broadcaster.

Today Jones admits she lives “a quieter, more minimalist life.” An avid cyclist, she does yoga, cares for her aging mom and occasionally goes to the curling club to throw rocks. The death of her father and mother-in-law within weeks of each other in 2013 was especially challenging, she admits. Her two sons are grown, making Jones and husband Scott Saunders empty nesters.

She says she’s hardwired to compete, and coyly doesn’t rule out a return to championship play.

While curling fans should enjoy Jones’ biography (check out her thoughts on her chewing-gum habit, Manitoba’s top female curlers, and her despair at losing the 2003 World Women’s Championships in Winnipeg, for starters), the book’s appeal to non-curlers is likely limited.

Assisted by Perry Lefko, a Sun Media sports journalist, too many of the early chapters feature a toneless storytelling style; Jones’ voice truly resonates only in the final two chapters and epilogue.

Pity — Throwing Rocks at Houses deserved more Jones, less Lefko, and a better title.

 

GC Cabana-Coldwell is a freelance writer, editor and fanatical curler.