Jan BETKER

Jan Betker, one of the victors at the 1984 Canadian Mixed Curling Championship, met Sandra Schmirler as teammates on the same rink (team) in Regina, Saskatchewan in the late 1980s and they decided to band together and form their own foursome with Schmirler as skip (captain). The duo recruited Joan McCusker as third and Marcia Gudereit as lead and discovered quick success, winning the Canadian National and World Championships in 1993, 1994, and 1997 and distinguishing themselves as the first Canadian women’s team to win more than one national championship with the same lineup. Their next stop was the 1998 Winter Olympics, where curling had been admitted as an official sport for the first time since 1924, and they took the gold medal with ease. In 2000, however, Schmirler died of cancer and, after several years of hesitation, Betker took over the position of skip in the rink in 2003 and added Sherry Linton to the squad. Although they were runners-up at a number of national tournaments, and won the 2003 Saskatchewan provincial championship, they have never found the same success as they did under Schmirler. Betker took a year off for the 2007-2008 season, during which time she worked as a coordinator with Curl Regina, but returned in 2008 with Gudereit, Linton, and Allison Slupski. Alongside her Olympic team, she was inducted into the Curling Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Canada Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. She is a director on the board of the Sandra Schmirler Foundation, organized in memory of Schmirler in 2001 to help care for infants in crisis.