That includes the Moose Jaw Ford Curling Centre, which had become such a safe zone for the sport that provincial qualifiers and Sask Curling Tour events were taking place every weekend, drawing players from all over the southern portion of province to the one rink that seemed untouched by the virus.
In spite of all that, province-wide is province-wide, and even sports organizations with impeccable records dealing with the virus will now find themselves out of action for at least the next three weeks.
“We just have to wait, I guess, shut down on Friday and wait until December 17,” said Mosaic Place curling programmer Rhonda Wenarchuk. “There’s not much else we can do. We’ll just take a pause and rest and that’s about it.”
The local situation adds a bit to the frustrating aspect of the whole thing -- despite having close to 310 members playing seven days a week across multiple leagues at the local rink, there were no cases of COVID-19 reported, and no game or league night cancellations due to an outbreak.
“Zero, we had none here.” Wenarchuk said. “Our guidelines were pretty good, we have some good protocol and guidelines in the club and the curlers really followed them closely, because they know what’s happening. So there were none that I heard of, anyway.”
That wasn’t the case elsewhere.
Multiple Sask Curling Tour events on both the men’s and women’s side of play saw tournaments end prematurely or outright cancelled even before the current massive outbreak hit the province. And just a few days ago, both the Regina Callie and Highland were forced to shut down for at least a week after exposures in their facilities.
“I think we had one of the better (situations) in the province,” Wenarchuk said. “It was pretty straightforward and I think the curlers felt pretty safe as well… but with the Highland and the Callie shut down for a couple weeks, that wasn’t good, and it makes it tough all the way around for curling and sports right now.”
As of right now, and as of Friday, things may be shut down for games, but depending on further guidance from the provincial curling body and government, practices for players under the age of 18 may be able to take place. That, of course, is still up in the air as decisions continue to be finalized.
Until then, the MJFCC will play out league games tonight and Thursday, and that’ll be that.
“We just wait and see right now, pretty much, that’s all we can do,” Wenarchuk said.
