Oh, what a week.
SaskTel Tankard organizers had little time after the Tankard trophy was presented to exhale before turning the rink back to its former home as a hockey and figure skating facility. But the week of Jan. 31- Feb. 4, 2018 won’t be forgotten quickly thanks to the efforts of organizers, volunteers and the curlers.
On the ice, Steve Laycock’s team defeated Colton Flasch’s team 9-7 in an exciting final Sunday afternoon, putting a bow on five outstanding days of curling and curling-related activity.
“I think that overwhelming is the first word,” said Tankard co-chair Helen Forwald. “What just happened blew our expectations out of the water completely. Our goal, our journey along the way. The community came out and supported it. The patch, the young kids supported that. Our 50-50s were well-attended and we had a great finish here. We welcome the Laycock team to represent our province.”
For five days, the best men’s curling teams in the province took over Affinity Place. Nary a complaint was heard from the teams about the city and the stands had a wide range of age from schoolkids to adults of all ages.
“Right from the building, they have it in, it’s a beautiful building,” said winning skip Laycock. “They had great icemakers for it, the hotel was amazing. We had nothing but a great time here this week.”
Laycock will wear green as team Saskatchewan at the Tim Hortons Brier in Regina next month, but there were a few teams that had really good weeks leading up to the playoff round – including Estevan skip Brent Gedak’s team from the Power Dodge Curling Centre.
“There was some fantastic shotmaking all week by these guys,” said Leah Moriarty, Tankard co-chair. “Our hometown boy gave it a good run but I think we’ve got a really good representative heading to Regina.”
The event was run so successfully, organizers are dropping strong hints that there may be more big time curling events in the future. First comes the rest after five intense, long days at the rink.
“We’re going to decompress here for a little bit and let this settle in,” Moriarty said.
“I think we’re going to do volunteer appreciation because without those volunteers, we couldn’t have done that without them,” Fornwald said. “We’re hearing from all around the fans that have come about the beautiful facility, the clean facility. Thanks to the city for allowing this. The city staff worked so hard. Our committee, everyone involved. It was a lot of fun and a lot of work.”
“I don’t think we’re done though,” Moriarty added. “Keep that in mind for the future.”
“I think this is just the beginning for curling events for us,” Fornwald said.
The next step will be a little bit bigger event here, and discussions have already started with CurlSask, the provincial body in charge of curling in the province.
From the outside things looked to be running smoothly, with events going on as scheduled, no significant ice issues and curlers having little issue navigating where they were supposed to be and when.
“That means our committee behind us did an excellent job in organizing,” said Moriarty. “There’s a few things, obviously that we could change but overall it did really, really well.”
The support from volunteers and the city went over and above the expecations of Fornwald and Moriarty.
“We weren’t sure, when we started planning this, how it would go over in the city,” Moriarty said. “The numbers of attendance, the volunteers, it’s blown our minds.”
“CurlSask said that we’d just need about 100 volunteers, and we had over 160 volunteers,” Fornwald said. “Those volunteers didn’t just work one or two shifts. They worked multiple shifts. They were coming for one shift and staying for 10 hours. It was their heart and soul put into this.”
With the Tanakrd now in the memory banks, one can only wonder what’s next from these organizers.
“We’ll see what comes and go from there,” Moriarty said.
