Through their annual fundraisers, Carleton University’s varsity curling club get support from the local Ottawa curling community as the teams look to offset costs from upcoming competitions.
Varsity curling was resurrected at Carleton three years ago after an absence of about 40 years. After several attempts from Kevin Goheen, president of the Rideau Curling Club, and Lynn Kreviazuk, a longtime curler and student at Carleton, the school eventually allowed them to restart the team. The university only agreed to allow the students to compete after they said they would pay for all the expenses.
“At the time, the University of Ottawa and Carleton were the only two universities in Ontario without varsity curling,” says Goheen. “When we got started we were told that the university can’t financially support competitive clubs, that was made very clear from the outset.”
After agreeing to compete without funding from the university, Goheen and the Rideau Curling Club offered to help out the teams in any way they could.
“They’ve been really good. They have been really flexible in offering us practice time. They’ve allowed us to put up posters for the raffle and to go into their clubs and allow us to sell tickets to their members,” says Kreviazuk.
However, after consistent success of the men’s and women’s teams at Ontario University Athletics tournaments, and the men’s advancement to Canadian Interuniversity Sport Nationals last year, the school has stepped up to pay for some of the costs.
“Now, we’re at a point where there is a memorandum of understanding between the university and the Rideau Curling Club, where the support is now regularized and in addition to the funding the university has been providing, they will also pay the OUA entry fees and they will also consider supporting student athletes with bursaries,” says Goheen.
Although the agreement has helped to cover some of the costs for competitions, the curlers still have to pay for access to practice time, transportation costs to tournaments and often have to pay for hotels while they compete.
Ryan McCrady, who competes on the men’s team and has advanced to the CIS Nationals twice in the last year, is not as optimistic about Carleton’s support.
From McCrady’s experience, so far, support from the school has been very intermittent. “They haven’t supported us very much yet. They’ve done little stuff, like paying a night in a hotel, but nothing substantial. Hopefully, if we keep doing well maybe it will get even better than the last two years.”
Of all the Carleton sports teams and competitive clubs last year only three competed at the CIS Nationals, one of which was curling.
According to McCrady, with the new agreement between their varsity club and the school, the university will pay their OUA entry fees but nothing else appears to be finalized. Therefore McCrady and the other varsity members will continue to look to cover the majority of their costs through their own fundraising efforts.