The Altona Curling Club has handed out four grants this season from the Terry Peters Junior Curling Legacy Fund.
The fund was established last year to help club members 18 and younger over costs related to things like clinics, camps, bonspiels, and equipment.
The largest grant, $1,500, went to Team Dayna Wahl to help cover a portion of the season’s coaching costs. The team consists of skip Dayna Wahl, third Piper Stoesz, second Gillian Hildebrand, and lead Lauren Weselak.
“This is a team that’s been doing a lot of curling over the last couple of years, and this was our opportunity to help them out a little bit,” said committee member Derek Wahl. “This is more than just a one-year thing for us. It’s looking backwards a little bit to support them for all the things they’ve done and all the work they’ve put in over the last number of years.”
“The girls haven’t accessed this fund since 2019 and we know they’re almost 18 now, so we wanted to make this a nice retroactive contribution to their team,” agreed fellow committee member Quinn Hildebrand. “Our curling club has really added a lot to the curling scene. We wish them the best of luck and it’s good to have role models like them. We have a lot of up and comers looking forward to trying to follow in their footsteps.”
“This will go very far for coaching, covering just under half the costs,” shared Dayna Wahl. “We’re pretty excited about that.
“We’ve all been practicing together and individually, and we’ve come a long way as a team,” she added. “Practices and bonspiels have been going great this season. We’re very grateful to the curling club and the Terry Peters Fund for this generous donation.”
The fund also supported Team Friesen, which attended their very first bonspiel, an U13 event in Carman in November, and won. The team includes Ellie Friesen, Seolah Kim, Myla Froese, and Savannah Friesen.
Grants were also used to purchase Curl Canada’s new Rock Star Instructional Manual for use by the curling club’s Little Rocker and Junior programs, and to send 13 Altona youth curlers to the Regional Hit, Draw, Tap competition in Steinbach Jan. 13.
