OUT OF THE HACK: Officer happy to be back in Brandon

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2016 (3411 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jill Officer lived in Brandon for the better part of four years in the early 2000s but she never had the chance to curl on the ice at Westman Place.

Well, except for the 2002 Scott Tournament of Hearts when she was the fifth on Jennifer Jones’ Manitoba team.

“I threw practice rocks,” Officer said before chuckling aloud.

Now 41 years old, living in Winnipeg and throwing second stones for Jones, the former CKX-TV reporter is back in the Wheat City this week to compete in her ninth Home Hardware Canada Cup of Curling. Officer has been on Jones’ two previous triumphant foursomes, in 2007 and 2011, but has been looking forward to returning to Brandon.

“From the moment that it was announced last year that the Canada Cup would be here I was super excited to come and play in my old town, my old stomping grounds,” Officer said. “I keep running into people everywhere I go and had a good chat with Mayor (Rick) Chrest and Karen, his wife, (Tuesday) night at the banquet and it’s just really nice to come back and see a lot of familiar faces and play here.

“It’s kind of like playing in a hometown for me.”

And while she had never thrown a competitive stone at the Keystone Centre until her team opened the Canada Cup with a convincing 9-4 win over Edmontonian Kelsey Rocque on Wednesday morning, she vividly recalled an encounter she had in the building with two-time Olympic champion speed skater Catriona LeMay Doan during her reporting days.

“I remember begging my boss to let me come in and interview Catriona LeMay Doan because she was speaking at something at the Keystone Centre and being a big fan of the Olympics and Canadian athletes that was right in her peak time and I was pretty excited to have that opportunity to interview her,” Officer said.

Now an Olympic gold medallist herself — reaching the top of the podium at the 2014 Sochi Olympics alongside Jones, Kaitlyn Lawes and Dawn McEwen — Officer has had several opportunities to meet LeMay Doan since that first encounter.

After the greatest curling accomplishment of her career, Officer believes she’s still the same person but nearly three years after that triumph she remains enthralled by the support she and her team still receive.

“The Olympics is a whole different ball game,” she said. “There’s so many more people that watch the Olympics and they don’t normally watch curling so I feel like we get recognized a lot more especially at home and it’s great because we have a lot of community support. We had a lot of fans that were really proud that we were from Winnipeg and that we came home with the gold medal.”

And there will always be a part of her that holds on to her time in Brandon, even if she doesn’t get a chance to swing by her old apartment or check out some of the newer strip malls on 18th Street.

EXTRA ENDS: Senior men’s provincial qualifiers in Boissevain and Dauphin are taking place from Dec. 15 to 18, with women’s regional qualifiers in Brandon and Dauphin happening on those days. The registration deadline is today. For more information, contact CurlManitoba at mca@curlmanitoba.org or 204-925-5723.