The transformation is now complete and the West Fraser Centre in Quesnel is now ready for the BC Men’s and Women’s Curling Championships.
Teams will practice this afternoon starting at 12-30 and then the first draw is set for tomorrow morning at nine.
Dave Plant, the Quesnel Curling Club Coordinator, says ticket sales have been great…
“From what I’ve been told and once again this is our first event to hold, our on-line sales are way over the top. We’ve sold just over 250 on-line tickets alone and through the office we’ve gone through 650 so we believe we have right around 900 tickets out there for the full event or weekend passes, that are already sold and that is huge. We’re so excited. You know we weren’t expecting quite that high, but we are thrilled that the community came forward to purchase these tickets.”
The West Fraser Centre holds 1200 seats and Plants says there will be game tickets available.
Plant says the community has also stepped up in a big way when it comes to sponsorship for this event.
Getting back to the curling, we asked Plant who the rinks were that people might recognize…
“Probably on the men’s side there is Sean Geall out of Kelowna, defending champ from last year, and Jim Cotter has a pretty strong team. The Tyler Tardi rink is competing right now at the Canadian Juniors and they’ll be here on Monday. They’ll finish up the Canadian Juniors on Sunday probably in the Championship game, and fly directly here. On the women’s side obviously team Van Osch out of Victoria is the defending champ, and there is probably two or three other teams on the women’s side that are very capable of stepping up and winning that event too.”
The Tyler Tardi rink out of Cloverdale is seeking a third straight Canadian Junior title.
A Quesnel rink, skipped by Brady Waffle, is also competing on the men’s side of the draw.
Eric Eriksson, Mike Pagurut and Dave Vatamaniuck make up the rest of that foursome.
In addition to the games, the opening ceremonies for the Championship is set for tomorrow night at 6-15.