Estevan Curling Club looking at future events following successful provincials

Estevan hosted a series of games as part of two different provincials championships and organizers seem happy with how the event turned out.

Over the course of the past couple of weeks, both the Viterra Scotties Women's Provincial Curling Championship and the SaskTel Tankard Men's Provincial Curling Championship made their homes in Affinity Place here in Estevan.

The games were well attended, with plenty of visitors coming over the weeks.

Estevan Curling Club manager Pauline Ziehl-Grimsrud says that the total amount isn't exact yet, but is substantial.

"We're just working on ticket numbers here because we need to go through these here just one more time, but we're looking at about 10,000 people who came through the turnstile, as it would be, during the event for all the draws."

The outcome was above what they'd predicted, especially compared to some past provincials.

"We were really pleased with the attendance. We looked at the attendance records that the other locations have kept and wondered what our expectations were going to be, but we met and exceeded our attendance expectations, so we're really pleased with that, considering how cold it was during the women's Scotties - I'm sure that kept a few people at home."

They had a bit of help setting up the ice and even ended up with some extra time because of that help.

"Darren and Jayson, the ice techs that came in, they've done this so many times and they came in and they knew what they were doing. We actually were ahead of schedule, they put the ice in quicker than what we had anticipated."

While new curling events will be looked at by the curling club, first they'll take some time getting their ducks in a row and resting up.

"We're going to look at doing something, maybe more of a national or an international flavour, and we'll certainly be having those conversations, I think everybody needs a rest right now.  I also know that we want to finish up our financials and all of that good stuff, which will probably be a couple of weeks before we have all those figured out, and then we'll move forward from there."

Ziehl-Grimsrud also thanked the community, sponsors, city staff, and the many volunteers who helped make the event possible.