Curling club considers hosting U-13 provincials.
Sydney Curling Club would consider hosting under-13 provincial tournament in March
SYDNEY, N.S. — The Sydney Curling Club would consider hosting the under13 provincial championship in March.
The George Street venue was originally scheduled t host the tournament Feb. 18-21 in Sydney. However, the Nova Scotia Curling Association cancelled all provincial events until March 1.
“We haven’t been approached with io we’d really haven’t had the chance to think about it,” said Travis Stone, the club’s president.
“We love hosting provincial events here and we had a lot of youth curlers in our club interested in taking part in the event, so we obviously would entertain the idea and be interested in hosting it that’s for sure.”
Stone said having a weekend provincial event affects the Sydney club’s membership, noting a decision to host would have to be reviewed by the board of directors.
“In February, we were probably going to lose two or three nights of league play, so our members wouldn’t be curling while the event was happening,” said Stone.
“Our membership has already paid their dues. We will have to see how much time they’d lose if we hosted the event — and we already have lost time — so we definitely have to evaluated that with our board and make a decision.”
In total, 10 provincial events were cancelled in January and February. As of now, there’s seven provincial events slated to be held in March, not counting recently cancelled tournaments.
Virginia Jackson, executive director for the Nova Scotia Curling Association, said the decision to cancel the events until March came down to safety and potential further provincial restrictions.
“The executive and board agreed that instead of doing this on a weekly basis and hoping that we were going to be able to get back curling as we normally would, we would cancel the February events,” she said.
“We’re one of the last provinces to say we’re trying to do events this year because we know how important it is for athletes to compete, but having said that, this is a very unusual year, and nobody would have seen this coming.”
As of press time, no dates had been confirmed for the under-13 provincial tournament.
Meanwhile, the Strait Area Community Curling Club is slated to host the mixed provincial tournament, March 18-22, at the Port Hawkesbury venue. As of now, the event is still scheduled to be played.