Another successful Oilfield Technical Society bonspiel is in the books, even if those books were fairly snow-filled from a blizzard Friday.
The 59th annual bonspiel took place at the Power Dodge Curling Centre and although it had fewer teams than at its peak, it was still a valuable place to be with camaraderie between competitors and close friends in the oil patch and related businesses.
“We had two full days of curling and we had 26 teams show up,” said Devon Fornwald, a member of the OTS and of the curling club. “Lots of action going on and a lot of people having a good time. We had lot of good curling and lots of good games.”
The bad weather Friday didn’t deter many from coming and there were a lot who stayed in the immediate area, like the lounge upstairs and the patch at ice level right by the sheets of ice.
“It was kind of good for us. Everybody stayed put here and had a good time,” Fornwald said. It was a really nice social event.”
And the social aspect was what many came for.
“It’s to bring together people from all corners of the oil field,” Fornwald said. “You’ve got operations, service and maintenance people. Lots of times you don’t get a chance to socialize with all these people outside of work. You get together and have a good time and meet new people and make contacts. It’s really good for the industry and it’s good for the curling club.”
The bonspiel, which is the last event of the curling club is one of the busiest for the club.
“Some of them play a lot of the oilmen’s around,” Fornwald said. “They play a lot of the smaller events and Oxbow and Carnduff and those kinds of events. They come here and they definitely promote the curling out there and tell what a good event that we have here. Next year is going to be the 60th of the bonspiel so we’ll have to promote that through the fall and the winter and maybe we’ll get it up to a 60-team event next year.”
The level of competition was very good for the event.
“There’s a lot of guys out here who have done a lot of curling,” Fornwald said. “But they come out here to have fun. When you’re out there, you’re out there trying to win. There’s a lot of good curlers and we’ve got some really good curling ice here at the club. They appreciate it. Your level of curling here, especially when you get down to the finals, usually you’ve got some really good teams out there with some good entertainment value.”
The A-side winning team of Cody Grimes, Micky Grimes, Debbie Bourhis and Kevin Anderson of Eagle Oilfield Services went undefeated in the event by beating Test Pro. The B-side champions were Brent Gedak Welding over Weatherford and the C side winners were TS&M Fibreglass over the Apex A team.
