Revealed Apr 15, 2022 • Final up to date Apr 18, 2022 • 3 minute learn
The gang in Port Elgin watches the 2022 Ontario Tankard closing between Staff Howard and Staff Epping at The Plex. Greg Cowan/The Solar Occasions
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Port Elgin is getting its likelihood to do the Ontario Tankard another time, and extra, with the addition of the Ontario Scotties Event of Hearts in 2023.
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The Port Elgin Curling Membership and CurlOn introduced that the Southern Ontario ladies’s and males’s championship occasions could be held within the city on Jan. 23 to 29, 2023 after a profitable Tankard was placed on there this winter.
Doug Flowers, who chaired the Tankard occasion and will probably be again doing the identical in 2023, mentioned Friday they’re excited to have the ability to do all of it once more and stay up for displaying the curling group what sort of occasion they will placed on with out COVID-19 restrictions in place.
“I was overwhelmingly impressed myself with the calibre of volunteers who came forward in our community,” Flowers mentioned of the occasion held this winter. “I have said to many people that our committee could have run the world. It was just such a talented group.”
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Flowers mentioned they went to the roughly 175 volunteers who have been a part of this yr’s occasion in addition to the sponsors to ask if they might be keen to do it once more if the request was made to take action. Most mentioned they might.
“We really had a dream, I guess you could say, of a full-fledged event with a packed arena, able to provide a lot of good entertainment and bring a lot of excitement to the community,” mentioned Flowers. “I think under the circumstances of COVID we did a really good job of that, but it really wasn’t the full-scale event we had anticipated.”
For the 2022 occasion, which ran Feb. 9-12 at The Plex, COVID-19 measures and restrictions pressured organizers to reduce and cap attendance at 500 folks.
So after getting the blessing from their stakeholders, Tankard organizers made the request to CurlOn – the Ontario Curling Affiliation — to interrupt with the norm of shifting the occasion to a unique group every year and permit them to be be host once more.
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Flowers mentioned he thinks CurlOn was each sympathetic to their request in addition to impressed with the trouble put into the 2022 occasion.
“They said, sure, let’s give you a chance to do it again,” he mentioned.
As a result of it was an Olympic yr, the boys’s and ladies’s occasions have been held individually in 2022, however the different three years they’re mixed, which would be the case in 2023.
And there may be already a giant title who has certified for the 2023 Ontario Scotties, after Rachel Homan’s workforce received the 2022 match held in Thornhill April 7-10. That occasion had been postponed from early January due to the pandemic.
“We were happy because she is far and away the most prominent name in women’s curling in Ontario, and possibly one of the most prominent in the world,” mentioned Flowers. “It gives us a real boost from a marketing perspective to have Rachel involved.”
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Together with Flowers as president, the steering committee for subsequent yr’s occasion will embrace Paul Schroeder, Deb Struys and John Leithead. Sponsor agreements are within the strategy of being signed with extra bulletins to come back.
Organizers introduced on Thursday that even with 50 per cent capability, roughly 5,500 folks attended the Port Elgin Chrysler Ontario Tankard this yr. The occasion was chaired by Flowers, with the steering committee together with Earl Anderson, Brian Crabbe and Kate Hagen.
Greater than $22,000 was raised by 10 space curling golf equipment by means of ticket gross sales, together with the Blue Water, Chesley, Kincardine, Markdale, Paisley, Port Elgin, Southampton, Tara, Walkerton and Wiarton golf equipment.
Greater than $4,500 was raised by means of the Rotary Membership of Port Elgin 50/50 draw to assist Ladies’s Home serving Gray Bruce, Saugeen Memorial Hospital Basis, Canadian Tire Jumpstart and the foodbank.
Flowers mentioned they plan to place comparable applications in for the 2023 occasion and with out COVID-19 constraints they hope to generate two to a few occasions the funds they did this yr.
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