It's known as the one of the most prestigious men's curling bonspiels in the province.
Now in its 84th year, the Kelly Cup is, by a country mile, the oldest sporting event in Prince George.
Too bad it's dying.
A four-day spectacle that used to be THE event in town, packing the eight sheets at the Prince George Golf and Curling Club and 10 more on an adjacent rink where the Roll-A-Dome now stands, has dwindled down to just 30 teams.
Back when this city was thriving as a pulp-mill town fed by locally-owned sawmills, machine shops and mom-and-pop stores, curling was something you could hang your hat on, a social pasttime to get us through those long winters in the days before video games and the Internet, when you could count on one hand your choices for recreational activities. The pungent smell of money being made was prevalent, even on good air quality days, and companies had no trouble rounding up players to form their own leagues. Best of all, bosses were a bit more relaxed about giving a guy time off to hunt down a Kelly Cup title and even cut some slack the following Monday when he needed a day off to cure his hangover.
Now we're down to 30 teams and 120 players, and that is cause for worry. As recently as 2001, the Kelly team list hit 64. It wasn't that long ago (two decades) the tournament was a marathon 90-team affair, with draws scheduled throughout the night. When they weren't curling (or sleeping), chances are the players were taking in the festivities at the club, dancing to live bands, cranking up their bar and restaurant bills, putting thousands of bucks on the line to bet on a team paying off in the Calcutta pool, and making lifelong friends. That still happens in the Kelly Cup, but on a much smaller scale.
Prince George isn't the only curling city feeling the pinch. It doesn't matter where you go in the country, the number of players tossing rocks at each other is down, and that's curling's problem.
The Kelly Cup has always been a men's tournament, having taken over naming rights of the Prince George Men's Bonspiel that started in 1920. Well maybe that has to change. Maybe the time has come to open this baby up to women. When so few curlers willing to sign up for such a coveted prize, almost certainly the tallest curling trophy in the world, why limit it to just the men?
Don't you think locals Patti Knezevic, Tracey Jones, Diane Dalio, Blaine Richards, Amber Cheveldave, and the Fewster sisters -- Jen and Kristen -- deserve to take a crack at the Kelly.
Heck we could even generate provincial interest sometime by breaking down the gender barrier. Just think of the possibilities. Then you could have Kelley Law or Kelly Scott trying to get their names on the Kelly Cup.
You could have mixed teams, women's teams, and men's teams all in the hunt. Remember how much interest Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King generated decades ago with their Battle of the Sexes tennis match. Just imagine the intrigue of a men-against-women Kelly Cup final.
Seem like a good idea? Wilf Peckham doesn't think so.
For 64 straight years he's played in the Kelly Cup and tonight he'll be playing in his 65th consecutive, so his opinion does matter, and Wilf wants the Kelly to remain a male bastion.
"I would like to keep it as a man's event, the ladies have their own 'spiel and they don't want men in it," said the 86-year-old Peckham. "There are still a lot of guys who don't like to get beat by women. It's a two-edged sword."
There are ways to get more curlers thinking Kelly, but Peckham says it would take a bit of a radical departure. He remembers the days when skips drew their teams in a draft and the draft order was determined by picking numbers out of hat. If you had last choice for picking your third, then you had first choice for choosing your second, and the names of leads were drawn from that same hat.
"What we've done is we've made a mistake by making it prestigious to win it, instead of just having a fun event," Peckham said. "People don't go in it now just to partake. If you break up the rinks, then everybody's got a chance. We could break up some of the rinks that have two or three skips on them and let them each get a rink. A long time ago, everybody had to bring a new curler and that's the way to do it.
"We need more junior curlers. There are other guys who aren't curling who would curl if they were asked. It's hard to get on a team."
It shouldn't be that way, but in the interests of preserving an 84-year tradition that's brought so many fine folks together, something has to change. Let's hope they figure out a solution.
