Crash Course in Curling

Crash Course in Curling: One man takes to the ice, broom in hand
Metro, December 2006

By John Rosengren

I’d driven by the two-story white stucco building on Selby Avenue with the St. Paul Curling Club sign on it many times, wondering, “What the hell goes on in there?”

The curling craze in this country, touched off by NBC’s daily coverage of the Torino 2006 Winter Olympics, made me determined to find out. I wasn’t alone. An estimated 10,000 Americans attended open houses at curling clubs across the country last winter. New clubs have popped up in places as unlikely as San Antonio and Southern California. Now, I must admit, I’m suspicious of anybody who considers sweeping a sport; not even broomball players go so far. But curiosity trumped my skepticism.

So it was that I found myself staring the length of a curling sheet one night this summer, gripping the handle of a stone and contemplating how to slide the 42.5-pound solid granite lump 125 feet to the bull's-eye. A curling “sheet” is about 14.5 feet wide and 146 feet long. There is a 12-foot, three-ring target at one end, with the bulls-eye, or “button,” one-foot in diameter. In a match, two teams of four people each take turns throwing stones—a total of eight throws—the length of the sheet, from the “hog line” to the target, or “house.” They do this eight to ten times total to complete a match. The team whose stone is closest to the button scores points for that inning, or “end.” The team’s skip, standing by the house, gives direction on where to aim throws—often in an attempt to knock the other team’s stones out of position—and tells the team’s two sweepers when and how hard to rub their brooms in front of the moving stone to help it find its mark. The team with the most points at the end of the match wins.

Around me, members of the mixed league on the four other sheets squeezed into the Inver Grove Heights ice rink practiced their starts. The men and women (about a fifth of the players were women), ranging from 21 to 73 years old, slid gracefully along the ice, stones poised, rear legs pointed, resembling gymnasts on an icy balance beam.

Loren Holmstrom, a retired pharmacist, showed me how to place my right foot against the “hack,” which resembles a sprinter’s starting block; prop a broom under my left arm for balance; grip the stone’s handle loosely—(this sport is far more touch than power); shove off the hack; slide 30 feet on my left foot to the “hog line,” (stones must be released before the hog line, or the throw doesn’t count) and release the stone, giving it a slight clockwise twist to curl right or a counterclockwise twist to veer left.

It looks a lot easier on TV.

I shoved off, slid a few measly feet and released my stone. It petered out halfway down the ice. I’m a reasonably athletic guy, but that was pathetic.

“You have to throw thousands of rocks before you know how to get it right,” Holmstrom assured me.

And that’s the easy part. Curling’s true challenge lies in the sweeping. “All you want to do is give the sweepers something to work with,” says Chris Houghton, 24, my team skip for the evening’s match. “It all depends on them.”

Easier said than done. Sweep too hard or too soon, and the stone might sail too far. Too soft or too late, and it might not reach its mark. Too much this way or that, and it won’t curl properly. Nick the stone with the broom, and you’re disqualified. This is all done jogging on ice in front of the stone, coordinating movements with a sweeping partner at the skip’s bark.

I clutched my broom, a hard foam piece on a four-foot handle, at the hog line for my first sweeping effort. As soon as my teammate threw the stone, another teammate and I tried to keep pace with it. When our skip yelled “Sweep!” we started sweeping—scrubbing, really—the rock’s path. My heart rate soared. Our stone settled lamely at the target’s edge.

Some of the veteran curlers complained about the ice. Their stones weren’t curling on it they way they wanted them to. Blame the man who prepared the ice.

Before we started, he had walked the length of each sheet and misted—excuse me, “pebbled”—the ice. Then he pushed a four-foot-wide blade down each sheet to “nip the pebbles,” or trim the tops off the bumps. The effect gives the surface a bumpy texture similar to tempered glass that provides traction for the thrown stones to curl, that is, hook one way or the other, left or right. The entire process of shaving, pebbling and nipping the pebbles takes an hour and a half. Curlers are very particular about their ice.

As the match progressed, the game changed with the ice. The stones and brooms wore down areas, making the stones behave differently. The skip must read the ice expertly before each throw, much the way an experienced caddy reads a green.

While curling doesn’t fulfill all aspects of my definition for sport—for instance, there’s no need to shower afterward—I was willing to concede its aerobic demands and skill requirement. Not to mention the strategy expressed in its own vernacular. “He blanked the end,” one man told me, “so he keeps the hammer.” Huh?

The man meant that the thrower kept the other team from scoring, so his team would get the last throw in the next round, or “end,” a definite advantage. That last throw can knock the other team’s stone closest to the bull’s-eye out of contention, among other things. The more experienced a curler, the better able he or she is to understand and apply the sport’s strategy.

Brandon Coombs, 26, a golfer and billiards player who took up curling last spring, explained the appeal of imaginative shot-making. “I like being able to visualize a shot and have it work out—sometimes,” he said.

Quick history lesson: Curling originated in 16th-century Scotland about the time those folks also invented golf. The St. Paul Curling Club was founded in 1888. Back then, curlers lugged their stones down the banks of the Mississippi to curl on the river near Raspberry Island (later renamed Navy Island). It was an aristocratic sport. When the Selby Avenue establishment opened its doors in 1912, Summit Avenue residents arrived in horse-drawn buggies. The chauffeurs warmed their heels by the fireplace in the upstairs lounge.

Today, curling’s appeal has broadened. The SPCC, now the world’s largest curling club, counts everyone from plumbers to professionals among its 1,100 members. The upstairs lounge has been converted into a dining area, with an adjoining kitchen and full bar. Curling is as much a social event as a sport. “If you can drink, you can curl,” jokes Jim “Dex” Dexter, an SPCC member since 1961.

Long a fringe sport, curling has taken root in popular culture. Curling occupied a four-minute scene in the Disney movie The Wild, released in April, sparking a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy: a lion curling a turtle. Celebrities such as Toby Keith have exuberantly declared their newfound passion for curling. Keith is reportedly considering a tryout for the 2010 Olympic team. This month, NBC will air a two-hour “curling with the celebrities” episode called the “Korbel Elite Curling Challenge.”

Still, the other guys in Coombs’ foursome didn’t understand when he missed their standing Saturday-morning tee-time to curl. “They think curling’s kind of lame,” he says. “But if any one of them would try it, they’d love it. All it takes is throwing a couple of rocks, and you get hooked on it.”

Coombs’ father, Charles, 57, an architect who curled briefly almost 40 years earlier in college, roped in Brandon and his brother Jared, 21, last spring when the Dakota Curling Club opened. The DCC is an off-shoot of the St. Paul Curling Club that draws from the southeast metro area. Curling has become their special bonding time. “My dad and brother and I don’t do a lot else together,” Jared says. “This is our chance to hang out.”

They’re not unusual. Seems most people become involved through family or friends. Matt Holen, 24, poised to enter law school, took up curling at the urging of his girlfriend, Sherri Schummer, who curled in high school in Bemidji, Olympic curling headquarters.

William Rivillas, 36, of Bogota, Colombia, credits the Olympics with motivating him to sign up for a novice league. Having landed in Minnesota, curling’s epicenter, made it easy to do so. The sport’s popularity here seems due in large part to the abundance of ice rinks and Minnesotans’ proclivity for winter sports.

Nancy Veronen, 55, is an attorney whose high school friends from Detroit Lakes recently introduced her to curling. “It’s fun to be able to pick up a sport middle-aged,” she says.

“You know the thing I like best about this?” she asks with a big smile. “I could go to the Olympics.”

She’s joking, but not so far off. Curling’s one of those sports that gives the illusion you could get really good at it with just enough practice. Throw one rock, and you want to throw another, convinced that this time you can give it the right momentum, get the curl just so. My throws did improve through the course of the evening. Same with sweeping. Give me a little time, and I think I could get it down.

Now, when I drive by that stucco building on Selby, I want to pull over and throw a few stones. I can see how this sport becomes addicting.

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