This article was featured in the April 8, 2010 Herald and News, C4 Diversions
By LEE JUILLERAT Herald & News Regional Editor
We were curling, but not in a beauty shop. The curling we were doing was the stuff of Olympians, not Mama Mia’s Beauty Salon. We were on the icy floor of the Boise Ice Arena, an indoor facility on the out- skirts of Idaho’s capital city and emotions were running high. Our team of four had lost the first game and we were hungry to win the second.
Like the cleanup hitter in baseball, our fourth team member, called the “skip,” was preparing to deliver his last two stones and, we hoped, earn us a split against the taunting quartet who, until an hour earlier, had been our friends. Curling was a last-min- ute substitute for a day of downhill skiing at a resort that — oops, someone forgot to check the schedule — was closed.
Curiosity piqued
We were disappointed, but curious. Most of us had glimpsed televised por- tions of the Olympic curling competition at the recent Winter Games in Vancouver, Canada, or the 2006 Games in Torino, Italy. “We saw a significant bump in the interest of curl- ing with the Olympics,” said Dave Rittenhouse, a past president of the Boise group during a quick curling semi- nar before taking to the ice. As he and Don Eschelby explained, the granite stones weigh 42 pounds so they’re not lifted, but “delivered.” Unlike bowling, where power helps tumble the pins, curl- ing rocks are delivered with finesse. The name curling comes from the twisting, turning motion of the stones. The stones ever-so-slowly glide along the ice, called a curling sheet, to a bulls-eye target area called the house. Sweepers use brooms to ever-so-slightly melt the ice, which reduces the curl and helps the stone slide. Some people call curling shuffleboard on ice, while the more esoteric compare it with chess because of the subtle strategies involved.
An ancient sport
Although it’s relatively little known, curling is an ancient sport. The first written reference dates back to 1541 from medieval Scot- land, and paintings from 1565 show peasants curling on ice in Holland. Curling is sometimes referred to as “the roaring game” from the rumbling, growling sound the stone makes while traveling over the ice, which is sprinkled with water to create a peb- bled surface. Roaring games of curl- ing were first played at the 1924 Winter Olympics and curling has been an official to be the newest sport at Olympic sport since 1998. Klamath Ice Sports next It’s been played in North winter, Klamath Falls will America since the 1700s, help increase those num- with the first U.S. club bers. formed in Detroit in 1832. Our roaring game ended Twenty-six states, includ- when our opponents’ skip’s ing Oregon, have curling stone bopped our stone out teams and claim 15,000 of the scoring area, leaving participants, “and I think his closer to the house for that number is going to dou- the game winning points. It ble,” Rittenhouse predicted. was a shocking finish, one With curling scheduled that left my hair on end.
Curling coming to Basin
Curling is coming to Klamath Falls. Suzette Machado of Klamath Ice Sports said a set of 16 curling stones and equipment ordered last year will arrive in Wisconsin in May and be shipped to Klamath Falls in time for the arena’s Nov. 5 opening weekend. A series of weekend open houses will teach people the fundamentals of the sport. “We had hoped to start before the Olympics,” Machado said, but delivery of the refurbished stones from Scotland was delayed. A donation fund is being started to buy a second set. Weekly drop-in sessions will be held and, depending on interest, curling leagues may be formed. She said Klamath Ice Sports has been working with the Portland Curling Club, which provided demonstration sessions a year ago. “We’ve got lots of people in the winter waiting for golf courses to open so we hope to turn them into curlers,” Machado said. For information on Klamath Ice Sports curling and how to donate visit the group’s Web site at http://klamathicesports.org. More information on curling is also available at the U.S. Curling Association Web site at www.curlusa.org
