St. Paul readies for Alberta women’s curling qualifier for Scotties Tournament of Hearts

HQ for women’s curling next week is the Clancy Richard Arena — hosting some of the province’s best.

St. Paul is set to welcome the eight best women’s provincial curling teams for the 2024 Sentinel Storage Alberta Scotties Tournament of Hearts, beginning on Wednesday, Jan. 24. 

“It’s going to be quite exciting,” said Mayor Maureen Miller. 

This provincial tournament will determine the rink that gets the right to represent Alberta at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Calgary, with all the best talent across Canada.

The St. Paul Curling Club has taken this project head-on, bringing the idea forward to the Town for approvals and secure the Clancy Richard ice back in the spring of 2023.

President Troy Bohn says this is huge for the community to host a large scale event like this.

“The curling is going to be awesome. I’m just excited to see the Clancy he kind of turned in from from a hockey arena to having four sheets of curling ice on it,” he told Lakeland Connect. 

Their organizing committee of nine people has been hard at work to make the preparations needed to host the tournament, but also the oncoming families and spectators that will be descending to St. Paul.

Alberta Curling Series has helped out to make this dream a reality, as the skating rink ice gets transformed into the four pebbled curling sheets for the five days of action.

This is a rarity of the Clancy Richard to host curling, and a unique experience for curling fans in the community.

“Some rural communities have definitely had the event here close to us. So we’ve gone and taken in some of those experiences, but I believe the Clancy…it’s due for a curling event.” 

Estimates range that the economic impact of the tournament could be in the $500,000 range.

The Town complied with the Clancy transformation, as well as chipping in a $1,000 towards the event.

Mayor Maureen Miller says St. Paul is a vibrant curling community.

“We host amazing curling in our community, so why not showcase it? And thank you to them. I mean, it takes multiple volunteers. We talk about this all the time, the volunteers within our community made this happen,” said Miller. 

“Thank you to our local curling club that actually initiated this application to the province to be able to host.” 

Tickets are available for individual draws, the semi-finals and finals, as well as entire tournament packages. They can be found online at abscotties.ca and stpaulcurling.ca  

In person, tickets can be found at St. Paul Glass.