CALGARY — There are no catfights, scandal or hard feelings. It’s just that the Olympic silver medal-winning team skipped by Cheryl Bernard in Vancouver last year has decided it’s better to go out on top.
Bernard, third Susan O’Connor, second Carolyn Darbyshire and lead Cori Morris have competed together for six seasons but will now be moving in a new direction.
“Sad? Yeah, but I didn’t want to go out with this team on the bottom either,” Bernard said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“I think the world of all of them and it’s really great to be able to end it on a high note and that’s what we’re looking at.”
Since forming prior to the 2005-06 season, Bernard’s rink was one of the most successful teams in Canada, winning two Alberta championships (2007, 2009), the Players’ Championship (2010) and Olympic silver last year in Vancouver.
Bernard said the possibility of a breakup was something they seriously considered for the past couple of years.
Bernard, 44, said if they hadn’t won the Olympic curling trials in Edmonton in December 2009, the end would have come a lot sooner. She said going to the Olympics essentially extended the team’s shelf life.
“We’ve put our lives on hold for six years and I think individually it’s the right move for everyone and collectively it’s the right one,” she said.
“I’m not a firm believer that you can redo this again. I think you lose something trying to do it all over again and I think we all owe some different things to different places in our lives.”
Darbyshire, 47, said it’s the right time to call it quits.
“At this point we feel that, realistically, we could never duplicate this experience again and as a team we would like to go out on top and as great friends,” she said.
Bernard’s rink lost in the semifinals at the Alberta provincial championship late last month. Bernard said the decision to split was made last weekend and that it had nothing to do with any sort of internal feuding.
“Oh good God no, not on this team,” she said with a chuckle.
“We had a lot of tears on Sunday. We decided to go out and celebrate what we’ve done. Twenty years down the road I want to be able to go have coffee with these guys and reminisce about the Olympics and life and what we did and in order to do that this is the way it has to happen.”
That being said, Bernard isn’t seriously considering any kind of retirement nor ruling out a run in some form for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.
“I don’t know that I can walk away from this game quite yet,” she said. “I’ve got to spend some time in the next little while thinking about it and making the decision.
“I won’t be surprised if three or four of us are all curling next year. Together no, but in different ways, yes.”
The team will finish out the season as the defending champions at the Grand Slam Grey Power Players’ Championship in Grande Prairie, Alta., in mid-April.