The 25th Winter Olympics will soon be underway. The games will take place at several venues around Northeast Italy. Among the sports playing out is curling.
It’s one of the fastest growing sports in the U.S. and one local organization is doing their part to spread the love.
Curling’s popularity has been on the rise since it was reintroduced as an Olympic sport in 1998. And since 2010, local nonprofitCurl Troy has been teaching residents all about it.
It was a frigid night at the Five Rivers Metropark Ice Rink where I met Brian Ressler, president of Curl Troy, to talk about their mission of education.
“Our goal is to try to introduce this sport to the community and let everybody know that it's sort of welcoming for everybody. It's an incredibly adaptive sport,” Ressler said.
That education starts with a little Curling 101.
Learn to curl: Curling clinics are open for registration online.
“It's two teams of four players,” Ressler told me. “And their goal is to slide 16 very large rocks from one end of the ice to the other, and closest to the center of the target, called the house, scores the point. And you go back and forth in different ends; it's kind of like an inning in baseball until the very end. And then whoever has the most points at the end of all. Six or eight or ten ends, wins the game.”
As with a lot of sports, muscle memory plays a key role in skill development, but Ressler says curling is pretty easy to pick up.
Ressler demonstrated how to launch the curling stone — during the play, that act is called the delivery.
Kneeling down with hands gripping the curling stones, he used one leg to push off the hack, which is similar to a track sprinter’s starting block. The push-off was smooth as Ressler traveled 10 to 15 feet down the ice rink.
In competition, Ressler would have propelled himself as close to the release line as possible before sending the stone sliding farther down the rink.
Then it was my turn. Stepping into the hack, it took a minute for my brain to process and execute the instructions I had been given. Finally, under the watchful eyes of several nearby players, I launched myself forward on the ice.
With no muscle memory to work with I manage a meager slide of three to four feet. Not far, but I was grateful for staying upright.
That night, about 40 Curl Troy members gathered for a league play-off tournament. One of them was John Burgmeier, a former coach and play-by-play announcer with the Wright State Raiders.
Burgmeier heard about the curling league from a group of long-time friends who wanted to join.
“And it just so happened,” he said. “I was in Finland, the winter before that, and I was introduced to curling by the Finland Olympic team when I was over there for business and work. So I'm like, 'Hey, I'm probably the only one out of you guys that has actually curled before.”
Burgmeier agreed with Ressler, that the sport looks more confusing than it is.
“We didn't know anything about it,” he said. “You see it on the Olympics right? And everybody's trying to figure out what do you have to do in curling? What's even the object of the game? So we came down the first year and this is our fifth year down here. Same group of guys and we just have fun. It's just a great time.”
Curling events are taking place in Dayton and Springfield throughout the year, and they’ve got a watch party scheduled at Southern Ohio Brewing for the Olympic gold medal match coming in February.
Curl Troy is also in search of a place to call home, a venue solely dedicated to the sport —and preferably one indoors.
But for now, they’re just happy to be out on the ice, playing the sport they love.
