By Michael Joel-Hansen

Art Hauser Centre gets curling makeover

Jan 13, 2019 | 1:25 PM

Work was underway Sunday at the Art Hauser Centre as Prince Albert gets ready to host the New Holland Canadian Junior Curling Championships. The tournament featuring the best young curling talent in the national gets underway Saturday.

The work got started Saturday night right after the Raider game. City removed the glass surrounding the ice and shaved off a top layer of the surface.

Part of the project Sunday morning entailed surveying the ice to check how level it was and to make any extra shaving tweaks.

Leading the effort was Darren Gress, who was sent by Curling Canada to serve as the chief ice maker.

“We try to get as level as we can, we also want to cut off a little bit of ice, because we’re going to build on the ice,” he said.

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After going over the surface at the Hauser, Gress, who has put in curling ice at venues all over Saskatchewan, said the overall level was good.

“Actually, it’s really good, It’s only got little small high corners, but other than that, it’s fairly level,” he said.

When the ice surface is levelled off, Gress explained they would need to put down around 1000 gallons of water.

“We’re just going to put a flood on after to buffer the hockey ice from the curling ice, so that when they cut out the curling ice, they don’t cut into their lines,” he said.

The next step sees white paint put down, then the ice which the curlers play on. Gress said getting things ready for play takes a bit of time.

“It’s about a three, four day process to get it right up to be curling on,” he said.

Gress was being helped in his work by two staff members from the Art Hauser. Also the host committee has organized volunteers who were on hand to help with the installation work.

John Toner, who serves as co-director of facilities for the host committees said during the installation process they have a number of volunteers at the ready to help.

“We’re running about six a shift, two shifts a day, six hour shifts, 12 volunteers per day for the next six seven days,” he said.

Toner added that once the installation work is finished the committee has people ready to help keep the ice maintained during the tournament.

“We go to maintaining the ice during the event and we’ll have the same number of volunteers again and the same kind of hours for the 10 days of the event,” he said.

Toner said some of the volunteers had past experience doing work installing and maintaining ice, while others volunteered because they were interested in learning about it. 

According to Toner, they did not have any issues finding people.

“We got lots of volunteers and lots that are willing to work the hours,” he said.

Preliminary work is underway at the Art Hauser Centre. City staff were shaving down some of the ice to level it out. @CURLSASK @PAGolfnCurl @CurlingCanada pic.twitter.com/e2gSCwgFtk

— Michael Joel-Hansen (@mjhskcdn) January 13, 2019

MichaelJoel.Hansen@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @mjhskcdn