Whitehorse Star Online – Curling club announces new major event – The Nuway Crushing Cash Spiel
By ECHO ROSS
Remember the excitement generated by the Canadian mixed curling championship, held in Whitehorse last month? From the energy of the spectators and the buzz around town, to the exceptional level of curling that Yukon residents were treated to by the provincial and territorial teams throughout out the championship? Well, pretty soon Yukon residents will be able to experience all of that on an annual basis. The Whitehorse Curling Club (WCC) has announced that it plans to operate an annual major cash spiel, to begin next November.
The Nuway Crushing Cash Spiel will be held at the Whitehorse Curling Club, from Nov. 16-19, 2006. And in addition to the Yukon, rinks are expected from Alaska, B.C. and Alberta.
“The response to the concept has been awesome,” commented Dave Thompson, president of WCC. “We have been able to secure a major portion of the sponsorship necessary prior to the event, with Nuway Crushing taking the title sponsor of the event for the next four years.”
Other sponsors already confirmed for the annual event are Skookum Asphalt, Air North and McDonald’s Restaurant. It is expected that at least 18 teams would compete for the prize pool of over $ 18,000 in cash. First prize will be $ 6,000, paying down to eighth place.
It’s an idea that the curling club has been batting around for a while, said Derek Charlton, the general manager of the club. Recently, they approached their regular sponsors with the idea, including Nuway, and their commitment made it official.
“Nuway Crushing is such a huge sponsor of curling, and sports around the territory, so they were a natural choice,” said Charlton.
Now, the club will be applying to affiliate the event with the World Curling Tour (WCT) as soon as they are ready to receive applications for the next season, with the hope that this new event will be added to the already very hectic bonspiel schedule planned for the last half of the 2005/2006 curling season, and the upcoming 2006/2007 season.
“We’ve chosen a week on the curling tour that is not a heavy week already,” explained Charlton. “We’re bound to have some competition, but we were looking for a week that didn’t have another major western spiel and wasn’t during the Fairbanks spiel either.”
Charlton expects to fill out the official paperwork to join the WCT in April, though it should just be a technicality. He’s been told verbally by Canadian Curling Association (CCA) officials that it won’t be a problem to join the tour, especially after the rave reviews the local curling club received following the mixed nationals.
“We’ve already received a couple of inclinations from a couple of world curlers that they will be attending (the major cash spiel),” he said. “We’re actually in the midst of working it out with a well-known world-class curling team, so that they will attend. We’re working with Air North on it, so they will bring the team in.”
Charlton wouldn’t provide the name of the team, but he did give a couple of major hints, including the fact they hail from Edmonton.
“For the first year of the event, it would be great to see an Olympic-class team come to Whitehorse,” he added. “They’ve been here before and they loved it. They were here for the TSN Skins Game.”
A major national event always bodes well for the economy, with those competitors coming from Outside booking hotel rooms, eating at local restaurants and purchasing souvenirs. Charlton expects the Nuway Crushing Cash Spiel will be no different.
“November is generally a pretty slow month, as far as hotels, restaurants and taxis,” he said. “Any type of event that can be held in the slower months helps the economy to stabilize itself. The more stuff we can fill the calendar with, in between summer, Christmas and Rendezvous, it will only help the business community.
“I think it’s important for us to diversify the tourism season.”
Charlton hopes the addition of a major annual event, with national-championship level curling, will also draw more attention to the sport locally. At the mixed nationals, local school kids attended the curling matches as part of a project, and most of them seemed to enjoy the intense action.
“Of course we want to focus on local curling as well, but every major competition you bring in like this, it draws more attention to curling and hopefully gets more kids and adults interested in the sport locally.
“That’s what the TSN Skins Game (when it was hosted in Whitehorse) did for me.”
The current trend in curling across Canada is either a limited increase in enrolment numbers or a decline, so Charlton said he would be happy if the current numbers in Whitehorse remained where they are over the next season. As the CCA develops a new marketing campaign over the next couple of years, and the trend starts to change, then the local club can start hoping for higher numbers, he said.
“It’s not like the old days. There’s a lot more winter sports for people to choose from out there, a lot more competition,” he pointed out.
With a recent announcement of a new sponsor in Ice Wireless, which will see the Yukon’s newest cellular provider as the title sponsor of the traditional Friday Fun League, as well as the Funspiel, WCC at least has a healthy sponsorship base.
“We’re doing well,” said Charlton. “It just goes to show we treat our sponsors very well.”
Here is some background on the World Curling Tour:
In 1989, the Association of Competitive Cashspiels debuted with 15 events, and was organized by legendary curling figures Ed Lukowich, John Kawaja and Eugene Hritzuk. All were prominent curlers in the cashspiel circuit and had won many major curling championships between them. These pioneers were instrumental in organizing the many cashspiels across the country into a competitive circuit.
In 1990, the Canadian Cashspiel Tour (CCT) emerged with 60 events, and was run for two years under this moniker. In 1992, the CCT changed its name to the World Curling Tour, and featured events from coast to coast, culminating in a season-ending Tour Championship, consisting of the top performers from the events over the course of the tour season.
Original tour founders included Lukowich, Ray Turnbull, Arnold Asham and James Furgale.
Rogers SportsNet began broadcasting live WCT events in 1998, as well as the Tour Championship. In 1998-99 and 1999-2000, there were 10 weekly televised WCT events on SportsNet in the fall.
Under the direction of Chad McMullan in 2001, and with the backing of major sports management organization IMG Group, the WCT undertook a new series of championships, called the Grand Slam series, which featured top teams battling it out in high-profile, high-stakes matches, usually set in arenas before thousands of fans.
SportsNet turned the focus of its coverage to these GrandSlam events, and broadcasted live games from the championship round of these events. Renowned curler Marilyn Bodogh, and Tour founder-turned broadcaster Lukowich, hosted these live broadcasts.
In 2005, the Women’s Tour of Curling merged with the WCT, and the tour was re-branded as the Ultima World Curling Tour.
Copyright 2005 Whitehorse STAR
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