The Coordinator of the Quesnel Curling Club says it’s going to be huge !
Dave Plant is talking about the announcement that Quesnel will now host both the Men’s and Women’s 2019 BC Curling Championships at the West Fraser Centre.
It will be the first time they will be held simultaneously in BC.
Plant says it will now take place from January 29th to February 3rd…
‘When we were originally taking on the men’s event, obviously the Brier runs a little later than the Scotties, but with us taking the ladies provincials on we need to give them a little bit of time to prepare, the winner, to prepare to go to the Nationals for the Scotties, so we needed to move it back a week in order to give them two weeks off prior to the national competition. So we approached the city to see if the time changes conflicted with any user groups and obviously there was a couple of events planned, but fortunately they were able to work around it and make this possible for us.”
As for logistics, Plant says it will mean a little more work…
“The one thing that does take place with hosting the men’s and women’s is we have to put an extra sheet of ice in in the new arena, so we’ll go from four sheets to five sheets and we originally we’re only going to do three draws a day but now with the extra teams we’ll go up to four draws a day, so it’ll be busy for the five days of competition that’s for sure.”
Plant says they had 30 people take part in the officiating course and Curl BC say they’ve never had a class bigger than 16 before, so he says he knows Quesnel has the volunteer base to do this.
He says it will mean a lot to the town…
“There is not only going to be 12 men’s and 8 ladies teams competing but all the family and friends that will come and obviously the attraction of the area communities, Prince George, Williams Lake, pitching in and wanting to help and obviously taking in the event, it should be a big draw for the community. And you know especially in tourism at the end of January when it’s usually not that strong, so the downtown area should be booming.”
Plant says it means a lot to him personally and other longtime curlers as well…
“Quesnel Curling Centre President Blair Hedden and I talked about this, putting this on and going after it when the new arena was built. We thought it would be a great way to showcase the great community that we have here, so i think by hosting it in an arena, with 1400 plus seats that are going to be extremely comfortable for all the people in the community to go and see the best in the province, it’s great for the sport of curling, to put this on in the community we’re just so excited at the center, it should work out really, really well.”
The 2019 BC Men’s Championship will feature 12 men’s teams competing for the chance to represent BC at the Tim Hortons Brier.
The 12 teams will play a modified triple knockout with a four-team page playoff.
The 2019 Scotties BC Women’s Championship will feature eight women’s teams competing for the chance to represent BC at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts.
The eight teams will play a round robin with a four-team page playoff.
Tickets will be available by October 1st.