Benson’s Robert Keating is now a member of the CurlSask Legends of Curling Honour Roll.
Keating was inducted into the Legends of Curling Honour Roll as a curler/builder for his years of dedication to keeping the Benson Curling Club alive and thriving despite the many outside and unforeseen pressures placed on the small prairie rink. Also factoring into the honour was his many accomplishments on the ice, including competing in numerous Men’s Southern Curling Championships, and off it by coaching his son’s high school team.
“After being involved in curling from the time you’re really young to you’re really old it’s quite an honour to be inducted with some of the people who are in there,” said Keating, who has served in every capacity as a volunteer with the Benson Curling Club over the years including a stint as the club president.
Keating said his participation in the sport was not only limited to Benson, but also extended to his time as a competitive curler when he earned seven first-place finishes between 1992 and 2008 in events such as the SaskTel Mobility Tankard and the Saskatchewan Curling Association (SCA) Mixed Regional Championships. He said curling also allowed him to help different clubs around Benson make ice and organize playdowns among other activities.
“I like curling,” said Keating, who no longer plays the game but still follows it closely. “I wanted to keep curling going and in small towns if you don’t have people volunteering you don’t have your clubs running. With the costs of energy you can’t be paying people all the time, so I just believed in keeping the game going.”
An interest in teaching kids the game also played a big part in Keating’s involvement with curling. In addition to regularly helping kids from Benson’s former school learn the game, Keating also guided his son Kris’ team in the SCA Juvenile Provincial Championships in 2008 and 2009, the Optimist Under 18 International Curling Championships in 2009 and the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association Provincial Championships in 2009.
However, Keating admitted the majority of his work in curling came through his volunteering with the Benson Curling Club. The two-sheet rink that was built in 1971 has been a drawing attraction to the small prairie town throughout its 43-year lifespan, which was almost ended early on a couple occasions through the years.
After presiding over the Benson Artificial Ice Committee in the late 1980s, which voted to do away with the natural ice at the rink after a series of warm winters, a plow wind roared through the town separating all the laminated rafters of the rink forcing the committee to decide whether it was finally time to fold the operation. Instead the Benson Curling Club continued on by fixing the damage and installing the artificial ice. Ten years later the rink’s basement began to flood and a wall started to cave in.
Keating said this incident was their biggest challenge and serious thought was given to closing the rink. He said the club’s executive board got together and brainstormed ideas on how they could possibly afford to still keep the Benson Curling Club going.
“That’s when we came up with the idea of having all these (fundraising) events that carried us through,” he said. “Our first one was Jimmy Packet. His men’s team was at provincials and we had him play Cindy Street’s team here and that was a pretty good success and we learnt a lot of things. We (then) decided let’s try to get Guy Hemmings in here. So a little two-sheet curling rink had Guy Hemmings and if anybody knows anything about curling they know who Guy Hemmings is and we packed the place. We ran closed circuit TV from the rink to the hall and we had both buildings full and that was probably the huge lift off our shoulders that got everybody really excited that we could pretty much do whatever we put our hearts to.”
These series of yearly fundraisers for the Benson Curling Club continued during the early 2000s bringing to town such accomplished curlers as Sherry Anderson, Ed Werenich and Rick Folk among others. Throughout all these charity events an emphasis was placed on having the celebrity curlers entertain hundreds of Benson and area youth through morning curling camps.
“We weren’t only helping our own club,” said Keating. “We were helping this whole area with trying to promote curling, so that biggest (turning point) was probably when the wall was going to cave in because we were so close to deciding to quite there. But having a young group, everybody just said ‘no, we’re not quitting yet,’ so we continued on for another (15) years.”
In the spring of 2014 the Benson Curling Club shut its doors for good. Keating said the town’s school closing down years earlier played a part as that took away Benson’s children and parents. He said the club’s young executive board who were so important to getting the annual fundraisers started also eventually moved on leaving a void of committed volunteers.
Membership at the Benson Curling Club going down due to declining interest in the game over the last decade was yet another reason for its closing, noted Keating, but a resemblance of the rink will remain in Benson.
“We put it up for sale and it was sold and the club is going to be turned into a house, but the exact existence of the curling club is always going to be there” he said. “We were very fortunate the people that bought it, that’s what they’re going to do. They are very community minded and they were thinking the same thing (as us) of having the original building stay as it is.”
