Curling clubs worried about making ends meet during shutdown

Curling clubs in Saskatoon have been left wondering about the future of curling during a sports pause that’s expected to continue into the new year.

The province restricted sports and recreation to groups of eight or fewer for people aged 18 and under on Nov. 27. Those restrictions will be reviewed on Dec. 17, but with new daily COVID-19 cases remaining the same or increasing compared to the period prior to the restrictions, clubs aren’t expecting to welcome curlers back anytime soon.

Steve Turner, the general manager of the Granite Curling Club, said the financial stress on clubs that already operate with almost no profits is immense.

“If we’re not operational and the revenue isn’t coming in, it’s a very slippery slope we’re on,” Turner said.

“These winter months are our prime time to be operational. This is where we make 80 to 90 per cent of our money for the year.”

Dwayne Yachiw, the general manager at the Sutherland Curling Club, can’t think of many curling clubs in the province that are sitting on a pile of money. The heating, water and gas costs are a major obstacle.

“We’re probably looking somewhere between $7,000 to $9,000 a month for that alone,” Yachiw said, excluding Internet, telephone or other expenses.

Clubs have been left with a few different options to keep costs as low as possible.

The Nutana Curling Club has opted to remove its ice and keep its ice plant turned off until the province allows the club to open the doors again.

Putting the ice back in will take up to two weeks, but saving operating costs will save the club thousands of dollars each month without curling.

Operators at the Sutherland Curling Club has decided to turn off the plant, turn down the heaters and let winter temperatures outdoors do the cooling for them. The only problem was the unseasonably warm temperatures in Saskatoon most of last week.

“There’s water on it,” Yachiw said of one end of the sheets. “The first few days of warm weather kind of raised a little bit of havoc. Hopefully, it’s going to get a little bit colder here and we’ll be able to keep it cold enough.”

Yachiw said the ice won’t “look pretty” when curlers return, but the ice surface will be manageable after less than a week of work.

“You’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place when you’re doing this kind of thing,” Yachiw said.

The plan for the Granite is a hybrid option of the other two clubs’ plans: Turning the heat down low with the ice plant running as little as possible.

“The tricky part is that none of us have ever done this before. We’ve never had this kind of a pause,” Turner said.

Turner and Yachiw said some clubs might have to close due to the lost season, even if curling does come back in January.

More than worrying about the club’s survival, Yachiw’s worrying about the shutdown’s effect on already-struggling membership numbers.

“We could lose a lot of our curlers. Numbers have been dropping over the last few years, so I’m afraid we’re going to lose those curlers — they’re just going to find something else to do and not come back,” he said.