SPORTS FLASHBACK 1948: Steinbach curlers build their own rink

Sports Flashback December 17, 1948

As soon as the ice was in, nearly 200 enthusiastic curlers took up their brooms to launch the roaring game in their own brand new rink in Steinbach.

Forty high school students, 44 women and 100 men began regularly scheduled games at the Steinbach Curling Club last night, just nine months after a small group got together to organize the club in March.

At the March 20 meeting, the Steinbach Curling Club elected a slate of officers to be headed by Bob Scarrow, the driving force behind the curling rink project. Dr M.R. Whetter was named first vice president, Ron Kreutzer, second vice president and J.P. Schmidt, treasurer. Other members of the executive of that first Steinbach Curling Club executive were Ed J. Friesen, Frank Sawatzky, Jac Fast and Jac Peters.

Their first item of business was to receive endorsement from the members to give the executive the authority to purchase a lot and organize the building program, with the hope of having a curling rink before the end of the year.

The meeting was told the executive held promises for the purchase of $4,000 in shares and would like to raise another $1,000 by July 1, when the building project would be well underway.

The building project, launched in May, ran into a bit of a stall during the summer, until The Carillon News reminded curlers there was a lot of work to be done if they wanted to curl this winter. There was a real need for more volunteers to help out a few evenings a week.

Although the foundation was in, and good progress had been made, this was a case of “well begun is not half done”.

The money the Steinbach Curling Club was raising would not cover the cost of hired labour and it was the duty of every prospective curler to support this community enterprise. Work parties were held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening and the expanded group of volunteers got the job done and rink was up and ready to be flooded by the middle of December.

The first season of curling was officially launched December 16.