WESTLOCK - The Westlock Curling Club will decide Tuesday, Nov. 10, whether or not league play will start later this month, or be postponed until early 2021.
Club president Paula Clark said they had initially tapped the end of November as a possible start date, but due to the recent spike in COVID-19 cases (there were 13 active COVID-19 in Westlock as of Nov. 4) , the board decided to take a wait-and-see approach. The ice plant has tentatively been scheduled to be fired up Nov. 13, but if the season gets postponed they won’t put ice in until early December.
“Everyone was kind of looking forward to getting going as relatively as normal as possible, but with the spike in cases I asked everyone on the board just to go with their gut and say what they thought. We came to the conclusion that next Tuesday (Nov. 10) will have us a few weeks clear of Thanksgiving to see what the numbers are like. We said that if numbers are still high in Westlock then we’ll start in the new year,” said Clark.
“And if numbers go down, and it doesn’t look like they will, then we’ll be curling by the end of November. If we hadn’t have hit that big peak we were planning to be curling by next week. We’d hate to get started and then you get shutdown and then you’re done. You can’t keep opening and closing.”
So far there’s no shortage of interest from teams, as Clark said they have around 14 penciled in for the Thursday-night league and a dozen locked in for Tuesday nights. While some area curling clubs like Athabasca and Barrhead have already started their seasons, others like Legal are taking the entire year off — Clyde has been shuttered for at least the last five years. Westlock’s slate of bonspiels have already been cancelled for the coming year.
“Everyone wants to play. I think I lost one team, but gained another one so we’re at the same amount which is good. I haven’t had anyone say they haven’t wanted to curl because of COVID,” she said.
“But we’re also trying to figure out different ways to generate revenue as we can’t have our bonspiels. We’re trying to do something a little more local with our local teams. But we’re fortunate as a club that we can take a (financial) loss this year. If this would have happened before our first Boston Pizza Cup, we wouldn’t have been having a discussion as we wouldn’t have been able to open our doors.”
So long as the town’s face covering bylaw remains in place curlers will need to wear a mask when entering the facility — once on the ice they won’t need to wear one so long as they follow the necessary social distancing protocols. In the lounge upstairs, curlers will also need to wear a mask until they’re seated at a table — the rules mimic those in place for local restaurants.
“As long as we follow the guidelines on the one sweeper and the skips staying behind where they’re supposed to we’re not considered a close-contact sport because we can keep the six-feet of distance. So then we technically don’t have to have cohorts like hockey where you’re in close contact,” she explained.
