The Estevan Curling Club will be welcoming 2010 Olympic gold medallist Kevin Martin to the Energy City next month.
Martin is appearing as a guest speaker at the club’s Jan. 15 fundraising banquet and as a host of a clinic for the participants of the McComb Automotive Youth Spiel held at the Power Dodge Curling Centre the same weekend. The “Old Bear” will also attend one of Estevan’s schools to give a talk to the students during his visit.
“It really is a no-brainer to get someone like Kevin Martin here,” said Pauline Ziehl Grimsrud, manager of the Estevan Curling Club. “He’s an Alberta champion, (which is) a tough province to get out of. He’s a Canadian champion. He’s an Olympic champion. There isn’t a major event that he hasn’t won in his career and he has longevity to his career. He’s well known. To us it’s great to have somebody like that come to our club.”
Ziehl Grimsrud said the club is hosting the banquet in an attempt to raise around $12,000 for their bar renovation project. She said they have been working towards raising the $55,000 to $60,000 needed to renovate their serving area in the Power Dodge Curling Centre lounge for a while now, and have some savings set aside for the project already.
“This will be the only major fundraiser that we’ll be having this year,” she said, noting they’d like to complete the renovations this spring and summer. “That area is original. It’s original sinks, original counters, everything, and the building was built in (the early 1970s). It’s just time for us to do a renovation up there and bring it up to modern standards.”
Tickets for the banquet, which are $50 and are available through the Estevan Curling Club, have been selling fast since they went on sale Dec. 11. Ziehl Grimsrud said there are a limited number of tickets that will be sold due to the space available, so she encourages anyone interested to buy theirs soon before they sell out.
