Curling rebounds, local club rebuilds
It took an old golfer to sell the sport he calls a wonderful ‘ hidden secret’
Bob Laycock was shocked by the “doom and gloom” he encountered when he was approached almost 10 years ago to be the general manager of the Calgary Curling Club.
He wasn’t a curler and was “sort of retired” after 25 years of running golf clubs.
“I really felt the curling community was selling the wrong stuff,” Laycock said. “They were dwelling too much on the fact there was no money in curling. Somehow, the culture of curling started accepting they couldn’t be better or couldn’t improve.
“You hear about curling falling off and there’s not as many people playing,” he continued. “In Calgary, since I’ve been involved, there’s been two clubs shut down because they were selling their worst ( points) as opposed to pushing how good a technical game it is, how social it is, how inexpensive it is, all the good things about curling.
“They seemed to be dwelling on the fact they couldn’t raise dues, and no one would accept their increase in prices. I totally disagreed. I thought, people don’t mind paying if they think the people at the place care.”
Laycock was using golf courses as his benchmark, as opposed to curling clubs.
“When was the last time you went into a golf club that didn’t look like a million dollars?” he asked. “If you make the places nice and people want to hang out, there’s a market.”
“It’s a wonderful game,” Laycock said about curling. “It’s sort of a hidden secret.”
His strategy to turn things around was to get people to try playing the game, whether it was youth or recreational athletes tired of running marathons or playing hockey at 11 p. m. or battling weather conditions to ski or backpack.
“We’re making it easy for them,” said Laycock, who now curls three times a week. “We tell them to show up, and we’ll do everything. We’ll give them equipment, we’ll give them lessons, and then we’ll get their attention.”
He also introduced family- oriented events so children could play with their parents.
“Introduce them young, try to get them involved. As they move along, just make sure the door is always open so they know we’re here when they do get a little older, that we’re still an active alternative,” he said.
“It’s just gone full circle. Our junior program is sold out, our learn-to-curl for adults is sold out, every league that we have here is full. We are extremely sold out. We curl from 8: 30 in the morning until 11 at night, seven days a week.”
Plus, the fact it costs only $ 200$ 300 to curl once a week “is unbelievable,” said Laycock, who was used to selling $ 20,000 golf memberships plus $ 3,000 in dues for 3 1/ 2 or four months of good weather.
Laycock saw lots of those golfers at the Calgary Curling Club, yet the building was falling apart and the board of directors was worried it couldn’t raise its prices.
“My heart was in golf, but then I come over to this and, after a few years here, we were going in the right direction,” he said. “Our club was honoured as the small club of the year in Canada by the Canadian Society of Club Managers in 2012.”
It’s got to the point where the board of directors has asked Laycock to stop selling, but he says it’s so easy because “there’s just too many people out there who want to try it.”
The Calgary Curling Club, which has made over $ 2 million in improvements over the last five years without raising dues more than two per cent, is now open year- round, with six full- time staff members.
“It’s all making it a place that people want to be,” Laycock said.