Kamloops Minor Hockey appreciative of city’s efforts to resolve ice time cancellations

KAMLOOPS — On Tuesday, the City of Kamloops corrected a mistake that would have seen Kamloops Minor Hockey (KMHA) ice times at Memorial Arena cancelled for the final five weeks of their season.

The city and Curling Canada agreed to move the Scotties Celebration Centre, the social and entertainment hub of the Scotties Tournament of Hearts to the Kamloops Curling Club facility, just next door.

“We appreciate the quick turnaround and the work that was done by the city, city staff, and there were a couple of council members that were involved in that as well,” Riley Woodland, Director of Hockey Operations for KMHA tells CFJC Today. “We appreciate the work that was put in by the city to make the change.”

Kamloops Minor Hockey is pleased that the city was able to find a new home for the Scotties Celebration Centre that was set to take over Memorial Arena. Woodland sees it as a part of a bigger conversation the community needs to have about recreation facilities.

“We need more ice surfaces, and I think we’re going to have more conversations about that in the future,” Woodland says. “Hosting events like the Scotties — I know we had the Brier back in the day, too — hosting those events shouldn’t affect our local users.”

Thankfully, the Kamloops Curling Centre — located just across Peterson Creek from the old barn — was available and met Curling Canada’s requirements. While it’s not ideal for the Curling Club, General Manager Rob Nordin says they can make it work.

“Taking our ice out is extremely difficult because curling ice is a little more finicky than hockey ice,” Nordin explains. “By doing a dry floor, like they do at Sandman Centre, that was an option. We’ll have to look and see what we can do with that.”

By keeping the ice in, there will be a few extra days on either side of the event when the Curling Centre will be closed for set-up and takedown. However, Nordin is confident that closure will have a minimal impact on club activities.

“We were going to be closed for the Scotties because 90 per cent of the volunteers come from our club,” Nordin tells CFJC Today. “It’s just much easier for them to volunteer if they don’t have to worry about curling — also, they all want to watch curling. It made a lot more sense just to be closed. We will have, now, about three or four days in advance to set up and a couple of days to get the ice back — get the dry floor lifted and back to where we were.”

Despite some extra work around the club, Nordin is looking forward to welcoming the nation come February.

“Any of the Curling Canada events are phenomenal,” Nordin says. “Curlers are a great bunch and they bring a lot of excitement. A lot of people that aren’t curlers will even experience a lot of the things around town.”