Couns. Stuart Young, Yusuf Mohammed, Dan Reynish, Mayor Linnsie Clark, Olympic gold medalist curler John Morris and members of Team Miller, a local youth curling team, were all on hand for the announcement Tuesday morning that Co-op Place will host a Grand Slam of Curling event in November. The GSOC Masters event will be held Nov. 3-8.--NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
urling talent will be on display in Medicine Hat this fall.
The Grand Slam of Curling’s Masters event will be held at Co-op Place from Nov. 3-8, announced Tuesday morning at Co-op Place.
The six-day event will feature 16 of the men’s and 16 of the women’s top teams from around the world, including world champions, Olympic medallists and Canadian favourites.
“This is one of the premier events in the sport, bringing together world-class athletics and a national audience over the course of six days. The Grand Slam of Curling organization anticipates welcoming close to 50,000 spectators,” Mayor Linnsie Clark said. “This is significant for a community of our size. It represents economic activity, certainly, but also represents visibility with national coverage on Sportsnet and international streaming on the Rock Channel, Medicine Hat will be part of a much broader conversation.
“Events like this matter because they situate communities within larger networks, they create connections, they allow us to demonstrate not only our capacity to host but our willingness to invest in shared experiences.”
The GSOC anticipates 50,000 spectators on top of 300-plus curlers, Jr. competitors and production and event staff rolling into the house in Medicine Hat.
This will mark the first major curling event hosted at Co-op Place and the first GSOC event in Medicine Hat since 2013 when the Canadian Open of Curling was held at The Arena.
“It’s crazy to think that the Grand Slam of Curling hasn’t been back to Medicine Hat since 2013, particularly with the city’s passionate curling community and rich history of supporting sporting events,” said Nic Sulsky, CEO of the Curling Group. “The Masters will be a showcase of the best the sport has to offer, featuring newly Olympic-crowned champions, Canadian favourites and curling’s emerging superstars.”
More information regarding teams and schedules will be announced in the coming months. Derek Schesnuk, manager of event operations at Co-op Place, says staff have been looking forward to hosting a major sport event like this.
“It’s honestly a dream come true, since I started working in this venue it’s been not for a lack of trying, but time was never on our side,” Schesnuk said. “The pandemic in the middle never helped us out, but finally, to see this day come to fruition has been really a pretty good highlight of my career so far.
“It’s a privilege, we’re not going to take any of that for granted. To have an event of this calibre to fit into our already busy fall schedule is something that this event centre was built for and designed for, and we’re able to pull it off with the team and the operations group.”
There will also be a U21 Jr. GSOC, which will feature 16 men’s and 16 women’s teams and will run Nov. 5-8 at the Curling Centre, with the finals held at Co-op Place on Nov. 8, alongside the GSOC Masters championship games.
Two-time Olympic Gold medalist and three-time Brier winner John Morris was part of the announcement, he was a skip for a team at the Canadian Open at The Arena. He remembers wearing a toque at the rink because of the cold. His focus has been on growing the sport, using the Grand Slam of Curling as a way to continue growing the roots of curling.
“One challenge we have is our junior curlers (who) come up through our great junior programs across the country, when they get to a certain age, they get to university and then start having careers, there’s a gap there that we really need to bridge because we lose a lot of curlers,” Morris said. “We lose a lot of really good junior curlers to life, maybe they can’t afford to curl and things get in the way.
“What we’re really trying to do with the curling group and the Grand Slams is to really help harbour that and really invest more in our grassroots of our game.”
Team Miller, a local curling team, was also part of the announcement as one of the teams who will likely be competing in the Junior Slam. Third Colby Sherwick says they’ve recently been watching the Brier and the Olympics and are looking forward to seeing those top names of the sport in Medicine Hat.
Sherwick says playing alongside them would be another level of excitement.
“That’d be incredible, I’d be so nervous but it’d be totally worth it,” Sherwick said.
Team Miller was Curling Alberta U15 Silver Medalists in 2024 and 2023 Marc Kennedy U15 Champions. Sherwick says they hope to inspire the next Team Miller.
“It would be really cool just to see that we inspired some kids to come out and play and maybe they can aspire to be like us,” Sherwick said. “Medicine Hat’s not a big city, but we’re trying to become pro and get to that level.”
The GSOC’s Masters event is the second of the five-stop tour that starts with the GSOC Invitational Oct. 13-18 in Victoria. The GSOC National is Nov. 17-22 in Sydney, N.S., the GSOC Open is Dec. 1-6 in Thunder Bay, Ont., and the final stop is Dec. 15-20 with the GSOC Player’s Cup in Kingston, Ont.
Tickets for the GSOC’s Masters at Co-op Place are available at Tixx.ca, or at the Co-op Place box office.
