Colleen Jones
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Colleen Jones (left) and her 2005-06 team |
Colleen P. Jones (born
December 16,
1959 in
Halifax,
Nova Scotia,
Canada) is the most successful Canadian women's skip in
curling history.
From a family of curlers, at age 14, she joined the
Mayflower Curling Club. At an early age, she gained success in competitive curling and was only 19 years old when she won the first of her 16 Nova Scotia curling titles that led to competing in the Canadian championships where she finished second. Jones graduated from
Dalhousie University and went to work in broadcasting in her native Halifax.
In 1982 she became the youngest ever to win the Canadian ladies curling championship but career, marriage and a family slowed her down, a little. She joined
CBC Television as a reporter in 1986 and went on to cover numerous summer and winter
Olympic Games. She continues to work for the CBC, and is currently the weather and sports reporter on
CBC Newsworld's
CBC News: Morning.
In 1999, with her new team of
Kim Kelly,
Mary Anne Waye (later Arsenault) and
Nancy Delahunt, Jones won the Canadian curling title for the second time. The team repeated this in 2001 and they went on to win the
World Curling Championship in
Lausanne, Switzerland. They followed this up with another Canadian championship in 2002 and then won it for a record setting fifth time at the
2004 Scott Tournament of Hearts. This made Jones the first skip to win 4 straight Canadian titles. From there the team went on to win their second World Curling Championship. Their return at the
2005 Scott Tournament of Hearts was not as stellar. The team finished the round-robin at 6-5 and lost in a tie-breaker to Sandy Comeau of
New Brunswick. When this happened, the team got a standing ovation, which even halted play in the other game that was occurring two sheets over. The following year, the team was back in form, but bowed out in the semi-finals to
Jennifer Jones. After the 2006 season, her team broke up, and Jones joined the team of fellow Haligonian
Kay Zinck, as her third. The rest of the team got a new skip in
Laine Peters. [
1]
In November 2004, while competing in the Continental Cup of Curling, Jones revealed that she has political ambitions and may run for office in the future.
She has also participated in every Continental Cup, and has been in 7
Canadian Mixed Curling Championships, where she has won 2 titles (as vice-skip).
Colleen Jones is a member of the Canadian Curling Hall of Fame.
Career Highlights: *Canadian Champion: 1982, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
*World Curling Championship: 2001, 2004
*Canadian Mixed Curling Champion: 1993, 1999
Her teammates
as of 2006 are:
*
Kay Zinck (Skip)
*
Mary Mattatall (Second)
*
Monica Moriarty (Lead)
*Jones starred in a
public service announcement about the
Canada 2006 Census.
