I am really enjoying the curling events at the Olympics. I never paid too much attention to it before this year.
At the local level, I can’t help but think that Curling Clubs are much like Golf (country) Clubs. A lot of social activity. A watering hole. Lots of beer consumed while curling. Are there memberships? Or is it pay as you play type of arrangement (like green fees or bowling alleys) League play? Women’s days? Junior league?
Are there tournaments at the local level? How do they work?
How many playing surfaces does a club typically have?
My mom told me that my grandfather used to curl when she was young girl. Back in the 1920’s and 1930’s. She grew up in a small town in Quebec, pretty close to the US border.
http://www.detroitcurlingclub.com/ Here is ours. It is very much a social club. It is more exercise than you can believe. It will bring along a beginner and help them improve.
Yes and no. Curling facilities run a gamut from country club-like places to community centre-like places. Generally the urban ones will be more country club-like while the curling rink in a tiny rural town will be community-centre like. In all cases much beer will be consumed. The most common arrangement re: payment is that teams (called “rinks”) will pay a fee to play in a league, usually curling one night a week and with a weekend tournament (called a “bonspiel”) or two mixed in somewhere. In addition, rinks can enter one-off bonspiels of various levels of competitiveness. Any given curling club will host several leagues, and some of these might be women-only, juniors, seniors, etc.
Bonspiels are generally played over a weekend, with a round-robin followed by playoffs. Entry requirements will vary from “have 4 people and the entry fee” to invitation-only.
Small town curling rinks will often have 3-4 sheets, though more isn’t uncommon. Large curling clubs in cities might have 8-10.
I haven’t curled for ages, and never did very seriously. Others may be able to provide better information.
Thanks for the information everyone. No such clubs in my neck of the woods, but I think it would be a sport that I would like to play socially. As long as I can drink some adult beverages.
From what I understand, I think it’s safe to say you will be allowed to drink adult beverages - Jim’s interview for his team at our local club was, “Are you looking for Tuesday or Thursday nights? Do you mind having a drink after the games? Welcome to the team!”
That is pretty much verbatim the interview I had with my skip when I joined the club at which I’m currently playing. He never asked if I was any good, and told me some time later that he was thrilled the first time we went out as a team and had a little practice and discovered that I was actually knew what I was doing.
Gorsnak has pretty much covered all the bases in his post. I’ve been in clubs all over Alberta and southern Ontario and they’ve been anywhere from 4 sheets to 12. My single biggest regret is that I never got to play at Calgary’s Big Four Curling Club before it got shut down – it was the Guinness Record Holder for biggest club on Earth, with a staggering 48 sheets of ice on two floors, but was shut down for good in 1988 for the Winter Olympics and has since been converted into a casino.
Every club I’ve ever been to has a lounge and the booze prices are usually better than what you’ll find at a typical bar, so it’s a great place to go watch whatever sports event you want to see on TV while enjoying a tasty malt beverage. Or you can even sit at the glass and watch whoever’s out on the ice actually curling.
IME, virtually every club has leagues for men’s and women’s teams, juniors (under 18), and mixed (two boys and two girls) squads. Typically, at least one of the leagues is non-competitive, or structured such that weaker teams don’t have to get killed by stronger teams all the time, allowing virtually anyone to join and have fun, no matter what level of proficiency they might bring to the game. There are also usually lessons available if you talk to the right person. Frequently there is also a pro shop where you can buy all your gear.
I wonder how much retention these places have. It seems like interest Curling goes through the roof every Olympics then you never hear about the sport again for another 4 years. How much is the sport growing?
These lounges are usually open to the public, too (they’re sticklers about cleaning your shoes, though), and seem to always be filled with friendly people. If you need a new local where you can actually hear yourself think and talk to people, you can do worse than a curling lounge.
some more questions, is Curling generally only a winter sport? With modern refrigeration technology, I would guess that you could keep ice all year around.
How about gambling on matches? I am an avid golfer, and IMO, what helps make golf popular is the gambling aspect. I wouldn’t be as good as I am (~3 handicap) without the incentive of winning money.
Correct. Once or twice a day, depending on the use, the ice is “pebbled”, or sprayed with tiny droplets of water which freeze, to give the ice texture. This is what allows the rocks to curl.
Starting a new curling club with dedicated ice is very expensive. A four-sheet curling facility costs about $1,000,000 or more to build. Just a set of 16 rocks can range from $5,000 for a refurbished set to $10,000 for a new set. Most new clubs in the US rent time at ice rinks, and borrow or rent the stones from a regional curling union such as the Grand National Curling Club, with the understanding that they will eventually buy their own stones. If you’re used to curling on dedicated curling ice, playing on arena ice can be a real challenge; it’s quite unpredictable.
Based on the experience at my old club in Ohio, at one time, membership formerly consisted mainly of older adults, the majority members of the country club that hosted the curling club. When curling became an official sport at the Olympics in 1998, interest shot up, and membership grew. There was a positive feedback loop, with the increase in membership growing slightly more every year, with a huge jump in Olympic years. Now the club is an interesting mix of younger Generation X, Generation Y and Millennial adults, and older Baby Boomers.
You could, but curling ice is very, very finicky to minor temperature changes. If it’s warm outside, the temperature might rise just a little bit in the arena, and dramatically slow the ice unless the arena and ice refrigeration units are cranked up to compensate. It’s also very expensive to keep a curling arena refrigerated during summer temperatures.
In the United States, because curling was never a mass participation sport (outside of maybe Minnesota/Wisconsin/North Dakota), curling clubs tend to be affiliated with country clubs. There are only three curling rinks in the Chicago area, and two of them are affiliated with CC’s. I play at the third, which is free-standing, but it was founded by break-away CC’ers in a wealthy neighborhood. This is very different from the curling scene in Canada.
Curling is a social game, you’re expected to sit down for drinks after the game, and most people drink alcohol. However the alcoholic aspects are sometimes exaggerated–we have plenty of non-drinkers and I personally prefer to lay off the booze on weeknights. I wouldn’t want non-drinkers to hesitate to take up the game out of fear they won’t fit in.
Yes, at my club you have to join to play. Once you pay your dues you curl as often as you want for free. For most events you get assigned to a team so that you play with a variety of teammates; for some events you can enter as a rink if you wish.
I’ve never known anybody to do that at my club, and I suspect it would be frowned upon. Gambling promotes quarrels. Curling is a team game, and all eight players may not share your wish to wager. Personally I wouldn’t want the added pressure of having to make a shot so that a teammate could win a bet.
Other clubs may be different.
Yes, retention is a problem. A lot of people see it in the Olympics, think it’s cool, come out for an introductory lesson, and join the club for the rest of the year (at discounted dues). Then by next year they’ve forgotten about it.
Nevertheless enough people stick around so that the sport is growing–from 10,000 regular American players twenty years ago to 15,000 today.
For a long time (before I got there) my club was in decline, like so many American community organizations (Elks, Rotarians, etc.). Clubs were associated with old people, and young people didn’t want to join. Now this is turning around and we are hopeful for the future, but as you say retention is a challenge and people have a lot of choices about how to spend their time and money.
Thinking more about the gambling aspect, I realized I have never seen any kind of wager on a curling game. I always found curling to be nothing more than a game of friendly competition. Yes, it can get incredibly competitive, but always on a friendly level–post-game drinks where you and your opponents analyze (and laugh about) the game just played are traditional. Gambling on curling, as on golf, would take something away from that. As Freddy points out, it’s a team game where one or more of the players might not wish to participate in a wager; I’ll add that golf is more of a singles game, where the assent of one’s teammates is not required to place a wager.
FWIW, I enjoy golf too, but I would not enjoy it as much if the other guys in my group insisted on playing for money. Thankfully, the guys I regularly play with don’t–we’re just out for a fun day of golf, a few beers, and some BS as we make our way around the course. That works for all of us. I can understand that adding a wager to golf is enjoyable for some, but it’s not for me.
An interesting variation is 2 on 2 curling - we got to play this way on a daily basis at the Granite Club in Winnipeg during the daytime.
The way it worked was one player would call the shot while the other threw. Then both players had to catch up to the rock to be able to sweep. The guy who called the shot called the sweeping. It was quite a workout, actually…
I also remember when I was a kid, there were winters where we’d get a sudden cold snap in the late fall/early winter, and Lake Percy (an oxbow off the Assiniboine River) would freeze smooth enough to be used as an outdoor skating rink/broomball rink and curling rink. Circles were spray-painted on the ice, and rocks were made using tins that had contained axle grease, with concrete poured into them and a piece of re-bar sticking out of the top. None of which provides the optimum conditions, but it was free and available at all hours of the day or night. We should have staged a version of ‘The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon’ out there…
Well, I had my first lesson last night and it came pretty natural to me, though I’ll admit I’ve got a lot of room to grow. I’ll have to see what the schedule looks like for some extended (multi-week) sessions, but it’s something I’d definitely like to continue doing.
I think I’m going to the beginner’s clinic next month.