Updated 02/18/2010 06:09 AM
Curling club hopes to gain interest in sport
It may only grab the national spotlight every four years, but curling is a unique sport that has gained quite a following. It was first introduced in 1924 at the Winter Olympics and after a brief hiatus, returned as an official medal event in 1998. Our Andy Mattison went to a nearby curling club to brush up on the basics of the game and get to the center of what makes the game so cool.
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WHITESBORO, N.Y. -- It's played on ice, with a broom and a rock. Although it only seems to get noticed once every four years, there are many that have picked up the sport for various reasons.
"I was frustrated. I needed something for myself. I work with my family and we all needed to get away from one another, so I took up curling," said New Hartford resident Joyce Shaffer.
"They're actually a lot of people in the U.S. that curl. It's sort of like our hidden treasure that no one really knows about," said 22-year-old Marena Taverne.
From a distance, it may look like it's just sweeping and shouting, but there is a lot more to the game than that.
"It's like chess on ice where it is tactical, where you are trying to position your stones to either block the house, to try to score before your opponent," said Utica Curling Club member Barbara Felice.
The house is the blue circle and the way you score points is by landing your rock closer to the center than the other team. Each team has four players, three of them alternate sweeping the ice the rock travels through. And then there's the skip, who is like the quarterback of the team.
"The skips controls the game, she decides what has to be done. She watches the ice very, very closely because the ice changes all the time," said Shaffer.
At the Utica Curling Club, league play runs from the middle of October through March. And with the game being more about strategy than strength, many have gotten involved in the sport.
"We have United Cerebral Palsy that comes down, we've got the Central Association for the Blind that are now curling with us, so we have started in the role of the adaptive curling," said Felice.
"If you want a nice winter sport to make the winters in New York State go by very quickly, you really should curl," said Shaffer.
It may only get national attention every four years, but it doesn't take that long to figure out how to play.