CURL MESABI

Curl Mesabi’s annual spring membership meeting and banquet have been set for March 28^th. The Board of Directors will conduct a short meeting at 5:00 pm, with the general membership meeting following at 5:30. At approximately 6:30 men’s and women’s teams will take to the ice for the finals of their respective championships. Don’t miss the action! Contact Scott Weappa to sign up for the banquet and for the entertainment following.

An election for new Board of Directors candidates will be held at this meeting. The deadline for filing is March 18^th. If you can’t make the meeting, proxy votes will be available from members of the Board. Ballots should be available on or around the 20^th.

The terms for Board Members Pat Wainio, Mark Forte and Paul Cerkvenik are up at the end of this year. They have done a wonderful job during their terms and we all owe them a great deal of gratitude for their hard work. They are truly outstanding members of our club!

I HOPE THAT MORE OF YOU WILL SEARCH YOUR HEARTS AND RUN FOR ELECTION TO THE BOARD. WE NEED NEW PEOPLE TO STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND TAKE PART IN GOVERNING CURL MESABI. FRESH MINDS AND IDEAS ARE ALWAYS NEEDED.

During the past year, the Board of Directors has talked about what we feel are important projects that Curl Mesabi needs to address. We need to tackle these issues one at a time, until they are resolved. We need your help! Please let me know if any of the areas interest you so that when we work on them, I can notify you. Some items require immediate attention, while others will require long-term strategies and action.

New member recruitment and retention – this is a very complex subject and certainly there is no room here to discuss all the variables. Essentially, we need to find better ways to recruit members and to keep them curling afterwards. Dues levels, open houses, mentors, league structures, club activities etc. all affect how new people feel about the game and our curling club. We need to do a better job. Each and every one of us is responsible for improvement here – not just the Board.

Juniors – our junior program is holding its own given the many different activities that kids today have as an option. I want to thank Ardy Nurmi-Wilberg , Beth Yapel , Jim Newman, Jerry Bodas, Owen Coe, Dorothy Bergerson and Wayne Wilberg for their work in this area. We need to constantly strive towards expansion of our program to our area’s youth. They are our future. We have many outstanding young curlers in our club who share our love of the game and will most certainly recruit others. I have spoken with a few heads of other junior curling programs in northeastern Minnesota and we plan on meeting during the summer to further discuss ways that junior curling can be helped at each curling club in our region.

Improvements – we keep pecking away at the amenities that we feel we need. We would like to complete the installation of cameras over all of the sheets and expand the PA system so that the arena is fully covered. Other needs will surely be identified. We will get there – slowly, but surely.

Advertising – the advertising committee mentioned above is a key to our future success. A successful advertising program will allow affordable dues for all of us, which affects the other areas mentioned here.

The 2002 National Championships held at our club were most certainly Curl Mesabi’s biggest accomplishment to date. As our guests arrived for their Friday night practices, they were amazed by the facility! Most of us felt the same way our first time inside the arena – wow!! If we were beginning to take things for granted, their comments most certainly woke many of us up.

When the week was done, they still loved the facility – but I think, also fell a little bit in love with Curl Mesabi (US). They very much appreciated and liked everyone they met from our club. There were many, many comments about the wonderful job that we did in our first attempt at hosting this very prestigious event and how nice everyone was. Many rated it the best Nationals event that they have ever attended – and I honestly felt that they meant it. Event co-chair Rory Malner probably says it best when he told me "Everything might not have been perfect, but we solved the problems as they came up".

Players were coming up to me and telling me things like "We should hold the Nationals here every year" and "I sure hope that you folks do this again real soon, we needed this so badly".

Many of us commented to each other that we saw our club coming together because of the event. Old agendas were put aside – we were working together on a common goal – in my mind, this was the biggest reward of all!

I’m having a hard time putting into words how proud I am of the effort put forth by everyone to make this event a success. It is truly humbling and gratifying to have so many people come up to me and tell me how great everything was. All of you can be proud of what you did. I especially would like to thank all the different chairs who spent so many hours of their time before the event in laying the groundwork. What a wonderful job they did. It took many people working together to accomplish what was done. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

We even made a little money! A report should be available March 28^th.

Thanks again – Dennis Jorgensen