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(Photo courtesy/Melfort Curling Club, Facebook)
Award Winner

Melfort Curling Club named CURLSASK Club of the Year

Apr 18, 2023 | 4:20 PM

The Melfort Curling Club has received the 2022/23 CURLSASK Club of the Year award.

A few of their board members attended a future of curling symposium, this past weekend in Regina, where they accepted one of the three annual awards handed out by CURLSASK.

The Lanigan Curling Club received the Club Membership Growth award, while the Wynyard Curling Club received the Future Club award.

Clubs are awarded for creating a positive, welcoming community space, increasing youth and adult participation, and striving for excellence in all club operations.

“It was really an easy decision for CURLSASK to select Melfort as the club of the year,” said CURLSASK community development manager, Dustin Mikush. “They checked all of the boxes in excellent club operations and best practices, volunteerism, finance and all those things.”

In the past year, the Melfort Curling Club has begun its revitalization project, celebrated its 50th anniversary, been named the host for Curling Day in Canada for 2024, and hosted numerous successful events.

According to the club’s president, Corey Faye, last weekend was a nice acknowledgement for all they have achieved.

“The acknowledgment from your peers and provincial bodies, that we’re on the right track, and that we’re working towards something to make curling better for everybody in our region,” Faye said. “It was great to see that recognition, and awesome to have some of our board members down there to receive that.”

During the rest of the symposium, it featured roughly 60 delegates and 25 clubs from across the province, to gather for some sessions on marketing, financial planning, club best practices, volunteerism, and other areas.

This provided networking and collaboration through workshops, which Faye explained is never a bad idea.

“We’re always looking to learn from other people and people can learn from us and hopefully, overall, we can gain some new ideas and add more people to our club and host greater, bigger, and more events, to make the sport bigger and get more people involved.”

And now with 2024’s Curling Day in Canada less than a year away, the club is set to begin their planning soon.

Faye added this award served as a bit of a precursor to the event, and shed light on how many people truly care about the club, which is shown by the work they do.

“Hopefully, will allow us to gain momentum. Any exposure we can get to kind of gain interest from people that want to be involved with it to put on a great event, or just on curling in the Northeast and the Melfort curling club in general, is definitely a positive,” he said.

“It says a lot of great things about our club, volunteers, members and everybody that’s working hard to try to make the club as good as it can be. We put a lot of time and effort into trying to upgrade our rink events, and try to really bring people into our community and make our club a place everybody wants to come to.”

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