The Uptown Curling Club is back for another winter, but its president fears this season might slide right through the house.
“The club is struggling with curlers,” says Keenan Kennedy. “We need curlers in all areas. This club is struggling in all areas, in curlers and financially. We need to get things back.”
The club has seen its membership steadily decline over the past few years. While the downward trend has leveled off for this year, Kennedy is still concerned.
A particular cause for worry is the women’s division, which Kennedy says has had to cut down from playing twice a week to once.
“The ladies’ curling is pretty low,” says Kennedy. “It’s almost to the point where they’re barely even having a ladies’ draw, because there’s almost no curlers at all.”
The club has flirted with temporary closure in the past. For Kennedy, closing the club, even for one year, is not a good option.
“If we shut the place down for one year, it’d be hard to reopen it again the following year,” he says. “People would just drift away and you wouldn’t get them back. If people want it, they need to come out. They need to curl.”
Declining membership is the main cause of the club’s challenges. It is the only curling rink still open in the Flin Flon/Creighton area, compared to four that were operational 15 years ago.
“It’s a dying sport,” Kennedy says. “It’s typical small-town stuff. Curling is not the social game people like to do anymore. It’s been dying for quite a few years. It’s the same old story in Flin Flon and across Canada, to be perfectly honest.”
Key to reinvigorating the sport is youth curling, but the club has had trouble attracting and keeping youth players.
“We do have the odd young kid that comes out with a couple of their friends and they curl for a while, but then they don’t come back,” says Kennedy. “They were interested, but they didn’t follow through.”
To counter that, Kennedy and the club are waiving ice fees for players 18 years old and younger.
“That’s what we want to do – get the kids back,” he says. “If they want to curl, and they’re a junior and want to put a team in, they don’t have to pay the dues.”
A phys-ed program involving the Uptown Curling Club and Hapnot Collegiate was proposed for last year. Ice slots were booked, but the partnership never happened. “They called me and asked if they could come out through the school to throw some rocks, learn how to curl, that sort of thing,” says Kennedy.
“We would be more than willing to have them come out if they want to put curling back in their curriculum for physical education. There’s more than enough time for them to come out and do it.”
The news is not all bad for the curling club. They will hold several bonspiels throughout the year, including a men’s and ladies’ bonspiel at the end of the season. The event replaced the separate year-end men’s and ladies’ bonspiels last year. Kennedy says the reaction from last year’s event was too good for the club to pass up.
“It was such a great success last year,” he says. “I guarantee we’re going to do it again this year.”
