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Winter Hill Public Use

The winter season was spectacular, even though the weather didn’t always cooperate with consistent temperatures for snowmaking. We welcomed a record number of season pass holders (10,696) and day ticket visits (43,101).

In the 2023-2024 season, we hosted seven winter activations for newcomer and indigenous families, welcoming over 400 new participants to engage in winter sports.

We welcomed 1,499 individual alpine and freestyle athletes from 25 unique clubs, an increase of 291 athletes from 2022-23.

Winter Sporting Events

WinSport hosted 12 events on our winter hill, including halfpipe, slopestyle, moguls, and big air. These events included provincial, national, NorAm and World Cup events.

The highlight of the season was the Snow Rodeo in February which included World Cup events in freestyle skiing halfpipe and snowboard halfpipe.

Due to the lack of snowmaking windows in December and into January, the scheduled World Cup snowboard slopestyle event was unfortunately cancelled. Many other facilitiies across North America were also impacted by an unusually warm winter.

WinSport also proudly hosted the alpine ski events for the 2024 Special Olympics Canada Winter Games. The alpine events included slalom, giant slalom, and Super-G.

WinSport Event Centre

WinSport has been making inroads as a go-to event venue, whether it’s for national or international sporting events, conferences, or concerts.

Two of the big sporting highlights were the 2024 Canadian Figure Skating Championships, where Calgary’s own Kaiya Ruiter captured the women’s singles crown on WinSport ice; and the highly successful Scotties Tournament of Hearts in February 2024. Rachel Homan and her Ontario rink won the women’s national curling title with a win over Jennifer Jones and her Manitoba rink.

The best of the best also gathered at the Event Centre for the 2023 World Ringette Championships. This event featured the fastest, most prestigious, and most exciting ringette players in the game. Ringette was successfully showcased on a global stage as sisterhood and camaraderie were swiftly established.

The Event Centre was home to the Calgary Surge of the Canadian Elite Basketball League for the second straight season. The Surge had another successful season, making it to the league’s Western Conference final. Furthermore, the Calgary Wranglers of the American Hockey League made WinSport their primary practice facility, the Harlem Globetrotters sold out two shows, and the Yonex Open drew some of the world’s top badminton players to the court in July 2024.

On the event side, Kamur Sanu and Sadhana Sargam played to a nearly full house in June, as did the Bethel Music Worship night, featuring both worship and ministry. Cirque Musica took over the stage in December 2023 and returned in 2024. Calgary’s largest Eid Ul-Fitr Festival took place in April 2024, with thousands of families enjoying a wide array of games, activities, speakers, and refreshments to mark the end of Ramadan.

Summer Camps

WinSport’s summer camp programs have been a summer tradition, teaching thousands of children fundamental skills. These camps, which include sport, bike, freestyle, and wilderness camps, along with a variety of skate, hockey and ringette camps, help promote active lifestyles, making friends, enjoying the great outdoors, meaningful skill development, and of course, having fun! Last summer, our camps included more than 1,800 mountain bike and learn-to-mountain bike participants, more than 3,200 sport and wilderness participants, and more than 150 taking part in summer freestyle camps. There were also more than 1,400 kids hitting the ice for skate, hockey and ringette camps.

Performance Training Centre

The Performance Training Centre (PTC) continued to excel in the athletic development community throughout the past fiscal year. The expansion of new business opportunities is driven by our strength and conditioning team who consistently go above and beyond to foster an empowering and supportive training environment.

National Sport School athletes continued to make a home at the PTC, fuelled by the ever-increasing demand for customized small group and one-on-one training opportunities to support their performance pathways. The PTC is still heavily involved in NSS’ Athlete Development curriculum every week to provide the education necessary to keep students active for life and prepare them for future post-secondary opportunities.

Despite team training equating to the majority of PTC users, the PTC still experienced growth in public memberships and plans to hold several educational seminars in the coming months.

National Sport School

The National Sport School (NSS) has been a beacon of excellence since launching in 1994 and has grown exponentially since relocating to Canada Olympic Park in 2011.

In September 2021, WinSport proudly partnered with the Palliser School Division, marking a new chapter after a long relationship with the Calgary Board of Education.

Today, the NSS supports 430 exceptional student-athletes from Grades 8-12 across 34 sports and 84 clubs, offering a unique blend of academic rigor and athletic ambition. Specializing in flexible distance learning to accommodate demanding training and competition schedules, the NSS began welcoming Grade 8 students in 2022 and opened two new classrooms in 2024. A further expansion of two additional classrooms is scheduled for spring 2025.

Since 2011, 654 graduates have continued high-level sport, building upon the school’s legacy of success.

School Programs

WinSport operates one of the largest snow schools in North America, with more than 20,000 ski and snowboard lessons taught in 2023-24.

A significant contributor to the Snow School are the school programs, in which 13,010 students either learned to ski or snowboard or improved their skills.

Students from the Calgary Board of Education, Calgary Catholic School District, Rocky View Schools, Palliser School Division, FrancoSud, and Foothills School Division participated, along with multiple private and charter schools.

WinSport continues to subsidize school visits to help reduce the financial barrier to participation.