Women Curling Leaders’ Circle award recipients announced

Five recipients have now been decided for the inaugural Women Curling Leaders’ Circle Gender Equity Awards, it was announced today by Curling Canada.

The initiative was launched last month and created to support new projects and ideas that attract women and girls to curling, with the following criteria:

• Building capacity for gender equity
• Expanding the quality or experience of opportunity for girls and women to participate
• Expanding the quality or experience of opportunity for girls and women to lead 

“This is the first time we have tried this type of initiative and the response was terrific,” said Elaine Dagg-Jackson, Curling Canada’s national women’s coach and program manager, who was on the selection panel. “The quality, variety of ideas and enthusiasm shown by the applicants was incredible, which made it very difficult to choose just five. This just proves what we know for sure: Canadians are passionate about promoting curling, especially to those that might be under represented. We are so excited to see what these incredible volunteers accomplish!”

Joining Dagg-Jackson on the selection panel were Renee Sonnenberg, Helen Radford, Jennifer Ferris, Melissa Soligo and Kyle Paquette.

The 2021 Award recipients, each receiving grants of $2,000, were as follows (in no particular order)

• Atina Ford Johnson/Okotoks (Alta.) Curling Club/Okotoks Junior Curling Academy to put on a weekend curling camp for girls and women.
• Stacey Dobbin/North Bay (Ont.) Granite Club to put on a Learn to Curl program specifically targeted toward Indigenous youth girls.
• Stephanie Thompson/Empowered Performance (Markham, Ont.) to put on a virtual group fitness program for young girls, focusing on reducing curling-related injuries.
• Steven Hopfner /Municipality of Ste. Rose du Lac (Man.) to put on a girls only league in their community curling centre, giving girls the chance to skip teams, which they weren’t doing in the existing youth mixed league.
• Stephen Fish/Niagara Falls (Ont.) Curling Club to put on a mentorship program featuring women mentor curlers working with girls ages 10-15 in the club’s Little Rocks program.