The Osoyoos International Curling Club is going to be a very busy place starting Thursday as it plays host to the 36th annual Osoyoos Mid-Summer Bonspiel. A total of 36 teams from across the province – and several from Alberta – will be competing in the four-day bonspiel that wraps up with finals on Sunday afternoon. (Richard McGuire file photo)
Curling will always be considered a winter sport, but it becomes a ton of summer fun for all of the participants who flock to Osoyoos every August for the Osoyoos Mid-Summer Bonspiel.
A total of 36 teams – or 144 curlers – will gather at the Osoyoos International Curling Club for the 36th annual Osoyoos Mid-Summer Bonspiel this coming weekend.
The action on the ice begins early Thursday morning and continues Friday and well into Saturday evening.
The semi-finals in all four events will take place Sunday morning, with the finals set for Sunday afternoon around 2 p.m.
Being able to enjoy their favourite sport, while also soaking in the beautiful South Okanagan sunshine is the key to attracting large numbers to the summer bonspiel each year, said Pat Wycherley, chair of the organizing committee.
“Most come to enjoy the gorgeous weather and beautiful sunshine and we try and make the curling event as fun as we possibly can,” she said. “This bonspiel used to be a weeklong event where all the curlers also found time to golf and play in a ball tournament, but most people were having a tough time giving up a full week of their vacation time to participate in a bonspiel, so we’ve cut it back to a four-day event for the past several years.”
As has become tradition, the Osoyoos Mid-Summer Bonspiel features an “open mixed format” where the teams must be made up of at least one female or one male team member.
“We’ve always wanted this to be a family-friendly event and we have several families that come up and curl together as a team,” she said. “We felt that having all-male or all-female teams might result in it being overly competitive and we don’t want that.
“We want people to have fun first and foremost.”
There will be nine Osoyoos teams in this year’s bonspiel and there will also be teams from Oliver, Penticton, Summerland and Kelowna. There will also be numerous teams from Alberta and close to a dozen from the Lower Mainland.
The team sure to garner the most attention is a team coming from Brazil, said Wycherley.
“They travel from Brazil to Vancouver to train for the curling season in Brazil … and they grabbed a magazine published by Curling B.C. and found out about our summer bonspiel here in Osoyoos,” she said. “I’ve been in regular contact through email for the past several months and they’ve committed to coming here for our bonspiel.
“There will be three team members from Brazil as well as their coach from Vancouver, who I got to know when we curled in New Westminister. It should be a lot of fun having our Brazilian guests in town and seeing everything we have to offer.”
The bonspiel will kick off with the first draw Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m. and will continue all day. Games resume on Friday morning and continue all day and into the early evening.
On Saturday, games will start a little later in the morning and will continue until around 6 p.m.
The annual Saturday evening banquet will then take place.
On Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening around 7 p.m., all of the curlers will let their hair down and participate in “horse races using special broomsticks designed to look like horses” in the upstairs lounge, said Wycherley.
On Saturday evening, the winners of the horse races will be declared and they will pick up their cash prizes before the banquet begins.
The theme for this year’s event is Tacky Tourists and all curlers will be asked to “dress for the occasion in their tackiest tourist clothes” which Wycherley predicts will result in a lot of loud Hawaiian shirts and shorts being on display.
Instead of assorted prizes to the winning teams, organizers are offering cash prizes for the first time in bonspiel history, with the winners of the A event taking home $600, winners of the B event splitting $500, $400 going to the team that wins the C event and $300 being split by the winners of the D event. Smaller cash prizes will be handed out to teams that finish in second and third place in all events.
Four years ago, the bonspiel had been reduced to 18 teams, by far the lowest total in more than 30 years, said Wycherley.
She and her husband Herb and good friend Betty Steinbart stepped in to take over and things have taken off once again, she said.
The 2013 event had 32 teams and last year’s event had 40 teams.
“We’re back on solid ground and it appears our summer bonspiel should remain strong for many years to come,” she said.
At the height of its popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, the Osoyoos Mid-Summer Bonspiel used to attract 64 teams, which is believed to have been the largest summer bonspiel anywhere in the country.
Most of the visiting curlers have family members or friends with them when they come to Osoyoos for the bonspiel, she said.
The result is this event has a very positive impact on the local economy, she said.
“They all need a place to stay, so I’m busy lining them up with hotels and campgrounds,” said Wycherley. “They also eat in local restaurants … this bonspiel provides a real nice boost to local businesses and we’re really proud of that fact.”
KEITH LACEY
Osoyoos Times
