Former provincial, world champion Zinck dies at 61

Kay Zinck, winner of nine provincial curling titles and two Canadian championships, died on Saturday. She was 61.

Born and raised in Truro, Zinck’s first success in the curling rink was skipping her team to a Nova Scotia junior women’s championship in 1978. Two years later, she won a second provincial junior women’s title and followed that by capturing the 1980 Canadian championship.

In 1982, while studying physiotherapy at Dalhousie, Zinck joined Colleen Jones’s rink to play third on a team that also included Jones’s sisters Monica and Barb.

The team would claim the ’82 provincial women’s title and then captured the firstever Scott Tournament of Hearts in Regina. As Canadian champions, they went on to play at the world championships in Switzerland.

Zinck won three more provincial women’s titles with Jones (1993, ’94 and ’96) and two others as a skip in 2000 and 2005. She also played third on the team that represented Nova Scotia at the 1991 Canadian mixed championship.

Colleen Jones, a two-time world champion and winner of six Tournament of Hearts titles, remembered her former teammate in a Twitter post on Monday morning.

“So sad to hear of Kay Zinck’s passing,” Jones said in the tweet. “She won the 1st Scotties in 1982 with me and my sisters.

“Kay skipped her 1980 Truro rink to the (Canadian) Junior title, paving the way for other (Nova Scotia junior) women to know they (could) win it too.

“Her family will miss her greatly ... so will her curling family.”

Zinck is survived by her husband Steve, their three children and a granddaughter.