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Curling Club hits the links

October 6, 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Combine curling and golf and you’ve really got a Canadian thing going on – it’s fun for all seasons.

The Shelburne Curling Club held its first annual fundraising golf tournament at the Shelburne Golf and Country Club on Saturday, September 30.

The Shelburne Club is a popular and thriving venue with around 150 adult members and 40 younger players in the youth program.

Keeping a curling club running takes a lot more work than you might think.

Maintaining the ice is the first priority and it takes some know-how to keep the ice sheets at the proper temperature to ensure everything works as required.

This golf tournament was the first of hopefully many for the Club.

“A lot of the members at the Shelburne Golf Club are also members of the Curling Club so we thought it would be good opportunity for them to come out and give a little back,” explained the Curling Club’s marketing director, Gordon Stephen. “The Curling Club does extremely well but we’re always looking at renovating and upgrading. We’re looking at some projects for the next couple of years that would reduce out electric bill and things like that. The idea was to bring the people out, let them have some fun and if we make some money we can start using that toward a fundraising effort for things.”

Curling ice must be maintained at the correct temperature to make sure the rocks travel like they are supposed to and make events competitive.

“We have a humidifier that we would really like to use. It’s about $35,000 so this is going to be our first initiative to get one. In curling rinks you get a lot of humidity. The ice has to remain at a constant temperature and constant humidity so the rocks will move down the ice consistently. When you’ve got 180 to 200 feet of ice it’s very hard to do that,” Mr. Stephen explained. “A humidifier would reduce our energy costs because it costs money to run the plant to keep it at a constant temperature. All the money we’ve raised goes to that as a starting point.”

Thirty-seven golfers took part in the inaugural tournament.

The current Shelburne Curling Club building was built in 1962. The Club was originally started in the early 1950’s on the property were Royal Canadian Legion now stands in Shelburne.

The Club has already booked a date for next year’s tournament.                                                                               

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