'It’s painful': Curling community feeling the effects of the closure of the Granite Curling Club

Marie Fehr curled at the Granite Curling Club in downtown Saskatoon for 30 memory-filled years.

“One time I actually fell and broke my wrist, and the manager, who was Mark at that time, took me to the city hospital and dropped me off,” she said.

“I had my wrist cast, and the guys that I curled with came and picked me up, and we went back for drinks after.”

Memories like that will no longer be created at the Granite, where staff announced the doors will be permanently closed.

“It was voted on at the AGM. Members came, and we hashed it out, and everybody basically agreed — it’s sad, but that’s what we’re going to have to do,” the club’s board president Lisa Beres told CTV News this week.

Declining membership and costly repairs were cited as the biggest reasons behind the decision.

“It hurts. It's painful to see any club in this province close,” said GCC former general manager Steve Turner.

“To be one that I’ve been with and know the people that are involved, it hurts that much more.”

Nutana Curling Club general manager Kory Kohuch says some curlers—like Fehr—will filter over to his club and the two others in the city, but some have quit altogether.

“The total number of curlers all over the province has been declining,” he said.

“Eventually in Saskatoon, we were going to have more supply than demand. And it costs a fortune now to operate clubs.”

Turner says the closure is far-reaching and will impact youth in the community that were involved in high school curling.

“This has been their home for a number of years," he said. "Nine sheets of ice were always filled with high school curlers, and they've had to scatter amongst the city."

It will also disrupt the Ride to Curl program by Curl Saskatoon.

“They want to get their kids on the ice, and now it's having a hard time finding a spot for them to actually curl.”

Fehr says she’d like to see the younger generations taking up the sport.

“We're trying to get more young people into the sport, but there's still mostly a lot of older people that are curling,” she said.

Turner says a new curling rink may be needed in Saskatoon, but it can’t be a standalone club.

“The city has to be involved with this - to have it tied into some other type of facility,” he said.

“Maybe you have a hockey rink, and then you can share the ice-making machinery, or something like a pool or even having the library that's coming down here. You tie those into more of a full-fledged facility, a centre, then that way it's curling clubs not having to rely on being completely full all the time.”

The Granite Curling Club was established on October 1, 1929.