There really is no good reason for Sudbury and area athletes to wait until December 25th to celebrate the gift of their successes, not when it represents a kind of present that can literally be enjoyed 365 days a year.

In what is rapidly becoming a highly anticipated Christmas-time tradition at the Northern Credit Union Community Centre (NCUCC), the local curling club hosted their “Night of Champions” on Wednesday, welcoming members to rub elbows with all of the elite who represented Northern Ontario this past year.

The highlight, however, came with a presentation that was made to world champion Tracy Fleury, the recipient of an authentic World Curling Federation championship banner that will hang proudly at the Wessex Street venue off Howey Drive.

“I’ve been playing out of province for a bit and haven’t had the opportunity to hang a banner at a home club in a while,” said Fleury. “The fact that the club came together to make this happen, just feeling that support, it’s really special.”

In chatting with club manager Kelly Irvine, it was noted that in order to create a genuine duplicate banner, a reach out to the World Curling Federation in Scotland was required, with NCUCC membership coming together to fundraise the monies needed to both fabricate the banner and also ship it over to Canada.

The end result was a very special night for a young lady whose team put together what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime season in 2023-2024, but one which they are on the verge of bettering in 2024-2025.

“Last year, we (Team Homan) thought that was a one-off and we prepared ourselves that it wasn’t going to happen again,” said Fleury. “It would have been easy to be disappointed if we started losing a little more. We weren’t really expecting to have another year like that, but we are certainly trending that way with another great year.”

"I think each year, we get more comfortable with each other - and get stronger."

As opponents have quickly realized, there is no way this impressive collection of curling talent is about to rest on their laurels.

"We tried to make sure to take some time to enjoy it and celebrate - and I think we did a good job with that," said Fleury. "But we still have a lot of big goals which really helps keep us focused."

"It's nice to have that Wolrd Championship win but we're not done yet."