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We prepare to bid farewell to what was another bountiful year in Island sports, but the big wheel keeps churning without pause.

There will be no shortage of national and international events on the Island sport hosting docket in 2017 with Canadian championships coming in curling, basketball and baseball, along with major stops in rugby and golf.

Here are some key events and dates for 2017:

• CANADIAN JUNIOR CURLING CHAMPIONSHIPS (Jan. 21-29 at Archie Browning Sports Centre): The venerable Esquimalt facility will host sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½â€™s upcoming next generation of great curlers. The hockey arena and six-sheet curling rink will be utilized. Perhaps fittingly, considering these are the stars of the future, the winners will advance to represent sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ at the 2017 world junior championships in Pyeongchang, South Korea, home of the 2018 Winter Olympics. Expect to see the top performers in Esquimalt vying for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

• U SPORTS NATIONAL WOMEN’S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP (March 9-12 at CARSA Performance Gym, UVic): The championship returns to UVic for the first time since 1993 at McKinnon Gym. Fittingly, they will be contested on Ken and Kathy Shields Court, named in honour of the coaching legends who between them accounted for 15 Canadian men’s and women’s hoops crowns at UVic.

• SWEET HOME NANAIMO: The travelling TV roadshow known as Hometown Hockey, complete with Ron MacLean and company in tow, rambles through on Feb. 26 to showcase the Harbour City to the country.

• HOCKEY PLAYOFFS: They start in the WHL on March 24. For the Royals, the coming WHL stretch drive and possible playoffs will represent a chance to atone for that .02 clocking frozen in Victoria sporting memory from this year. If anyone needs an explanation, they clearly weren’t paying attention in 2016.

In the Island Division of the BCHL, the Victoria Grizzlies have had a torrid campaign so far, with the Powell River Kings and Cowichan Valley Capitals also contenders. But it counts the most in the playoffs after the regular season concludes Feb. 26.

• RUNNING A REVOLUTION: That’s what they have been doing for a long time here. The Spandex brigade — a coveted demographic for any city — takes over the streets once again for the 28th annual sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ 10K on April 30, Kool Oak Bay Half-Marathon on May 28 and 38th annual GoodLife Fitness Victoria Marathon on Oct. 8.

This region has also been known to produce a triathlete or two, which of course, is a massive understatement. Some of the best pros in the world again hit the waters and trails of Elk Lake and roads of the Saanich Peninsula on June 4 for the 22nd-annual Subaru Ironman 70.3 Victoria.

• CYCLE CITY: They certainly know how to pedal here, too. Fans can catch 2016 Rio Olympics bronze-medallist Catharine Pendrel and Rio fourth-place finisher Emily Batty duel it out again at the sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ Cup mountain biking race March 5 on Bear Mountain. The best young pros then invade Island streets from Dallas Road to Metchosin for the annual Robert W. Cameron Cycling Series weekend June 2-4.

• STARS ON ICE (May 16 at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre): The annual figure skating show returns to Victoria with a little more urgency as the next Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang will be less than a year away at that point. Pyeongchang medal hopefuls set to perform on Blanshard next spring are three-time world champion Patrick Chan, 2014 Sochi Olympic team silver-

medallist and two-time Canadian women’s champion Kaetlyn Osmond and defending two-time world pairs champions and Sochi Olympic team silver-medallists Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford.

• WOMEN’S CANADA SEVENS (May 27-28 at Westhills Stadium): It isn’t anticipation of the next Winter Games, but reverberations from the last Summer Olympics, that will echo through Langford, as Rio 2016 medallists Australia, New Zealand and sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ will all compete in the fifth stop on the six-event HSBC Women’s Rugby Sevens World Series.

International men’s XVs games are also on tap at Westhills in 2017 with Americas Rugby Championship fixtures featuring sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ against Argentina on Feb. 4 and sa¹ú¼Ê´«Ã½ against Chile on Feb. 11.

• HARBOURCATS HOME OPENER (June 5 at Royal Athletic Park): The Victoria HarbourCats will be out to prove their 2016 West Coast League regular-season championship was not a one-off fluke when new head coach and former major-leaguer Brian McRae guides the team into NCAA summer-league battle. The HarbourCats inaugurate a new cross-strait rivalry with the 2017 WCL season opener June 1 in Port Angeles against the Lefties, which is the relocated Kitsap BlueJackets franchise. The HarbourCats’ home opener, the first of 27 league dates at Royal Athletic Park, is June 5 against the Wenatchee AppleSox.

As a bit of post-HarbourCats dessert, the Canadian senior men’s baseball championship is being hosted Aug. 23-27 at Royal Athletic Park.

• SHAMROCKS SEASON: The 2015 national champion Victoria Shamrocks’ three-year run as Western Lacrosse Associaton champions ended in 2016 with a six-game loss in the league final to the Maple Ridge Burrards, who made their first Mann Cup national final appearance since 1990.

The Shamrocks mount their campaign to recapture the WLA and Mann Cup titles when home games begin in the spring at The Q Centre. The 2017 schedule has yet to be announced but it should start in May with the annual season-opening Island derby against the Nanaimo Timbermen.

• BAYVIEW PLACE VICTORIA OPEN (June 8-11 at Uplands): The aspiring golf stars of the future pass through the capital for the 35th year — a fitting opening bookend to what comes later in the summer with the PGA Tour Champions event at Bear Mountain.

• PACIFIC LINKS PGA TOUR CHAMPIONS (Sept. 11-17 at Bear Mountain): A field representing the vast panorama of golf history will again spread across the Mountain Course. Some of the greatest names from golf’s past return to the Bear for a PGA Tour Champions tournament. Last year’s marquee field, which included Bernhard Langer, Vijay Singh, Mark O’Meara and defending champion Colin Montgomerie, looks to be joined next September by the likes of John Daly, Jesper Parnevik and a possibly healthy Fred Couples, along with newly qualified seniors Davis Love III, David Toms and former Victroria Open champion Steve Stricker.

• THE WORLD TRAIL: With the tumult and shouting from Rio having subsided, 2017 represents the year in the quadrennial that does not feature an Olympics or Commonwealth/Pan Am Games for the Island’s numerous sporting internationals. There are, however, world championship medals to chase in 2017. The FINA world aquatics championships are July 14-30 in Budapest; IAAF world track and field championships Aug. 4-13 in London; world rowing championships Sept. 24-Oct. 1 in Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida; ITU world triathlon championships Sept. 14-17 in Rotterdam; and UCI world mountain biking championships Sept. 15-22 in Cairns, Australia.

In soccer, the 2018 World Cup dream is over for Canadian men’s internationals Adam Straith and Simon Thomas of Victoria. But they do still have the 2017 CONCACAF Gold Cup from July 7-26 in the U.S.