Morris knows bonspiel business

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This article was published 24/03/2009 (6343 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ON paper, it looked like any other small- town bonspiel, with a prize as modest as the field.

But look a little deeper and what happened in Morris over the weekend with the $43,000 Dekalb Superspiel was actually a pretty interesting little experiment, an exercise in what can be accomplished if a small town punches above its weight class and thinks outside the box.

By the time they threw the last rock at the Morris Curling Club late Monday afternoon, several things had become clear: Build it well and stage it in the spring and the curlers will come, all the way from China in one case. Give the youngsters a hand up, not a handout, and they’ll surprise you with what they can do. Be innovative and your club too can own six sets of brand-new curling rocks for free.

This year’s resurrection of the Dekalb Superspiel, with a legacy dating back to the 1970s, was the brainchild, as most things involving curling and Morris are, of curler/local farmer/tireless volunteer Lorne Hamblin.

Hamblin’s idea was this: Stage a major men’s and women’s bonspiel after the Brier, at a time when the vast majority of curlers have already hung up their brooms for the season and many curlers are looking for a way to audition new teams or pick up much-needed Trials points. Treat the curlers first-class, giving them excellent playing conditions, picking up and dropping off the out-of-towners at the airport and even running them into Winnipeg for day trips. And give the juniors — and seniors — a price break, encouraging them to play by allowing them to set their own entry fee.

Put it all together and you have the 2009 Dekalb Superspiel, which wrapped up Monday with Vic Peters winning the men’s final and the $8,000 first prize, Calgary’s Crystal Webster winning the women’s final and the $5,250 first prize, a couple of subsidized junior teams making the playoffs and the Morris Curling Club emerging the biggest winner of all, with a sparkling new set of curling rocks and a new reputation as an elite stop on the World Curling Tour.

“All you can ask for as a player is good ice and good competition, and they had both of those this weekend… For us, it exactly met all our goals,” Webster observed Monday night.

Peters, who was auditioning a new lineup this weekend that sees his son Daley Peters throw last rock, had nothing but praise for the new event and its lead organizer. “Lorne Hamblin doesn’t do anything halfway,” Peters said. “This was first-class all the way.”

His was one of about a half-dozen new or experimental local teams that used the Morris spiel as a test event before the brooms are put away for the summer.

“It was a good initiation for us,” Peters said. “A good chance to get on some really good ice.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca