The niche sport known as curling aims to find an audience with locals and juniors
By KURT DUSTERBERG
In the final days of August, with 90-degree heat still gripping the Triangle, a handful of folks gathered at Triangle Curling Club in southeast Durham to prepare for the coming season. The people in charge of flooding and freezing the surface are members of the club, an all-volunteer group of curling enthusiasts who operate the 501(c)(3) organization.
To the wider audience, curling grabs the spotlight every four years during the Winter Olympics, when the curious mix of gliding stones and brushing the ice captivates the public. But for a loyal core of followers, the sport is a way of life.
“No matter where you go around the country, curlers are fun people,” says Franklinton resident Peter Dellapelle. “As far as the game itself, there’s an individual challenge: Can I put this stone where I want it? There’s competition, but there’s also a team effort. And there is the strategy of it. So, it’s a multifaceted game.”
Games are divided into 10 “ends,” like baseball innings, with four players on a team. Each team throws eight rocks (also called stones), trying to land them closest to the “house,” the center ring. Sweeping frenetically in front of the stone helps it travel farther and straighter, while reducing friction and helping control how much the stone curls, or travels along a curved path. A match generally takes about two hours.
Many of the Triangle Curling Club’s 400 members are Canadian transplants like Brian Chick, a Winnipeg native, and his daughter Andrea, who became a competitive curler.
But the local club is trying to build a junior program organically in the Triangle, led by Derek Corbett, a former member of the U.S. World Junior Championships team.
“A lot of [juniors] practice and work on skills, but they don’t play a lot of games,” Chick says. “We’ve been trying to encourage the juniors to get into leagues and on teams with other juniors so they get into the game more. Throwing a junior into an adult league won’t work.”
Triangle Curling Club offers a Sunday afternoon junior recreational program for ages 5–21. No experience is necessary, and some instruction is included. For more seasoned curlers, there’s an advanced commitment program that includes focused training and preparation for tournaments, called bonspiels. The club hosts the Triangle Junior Bonspiel each January. This year’s tournament is January 4–5 and is open to all curlers 21 and under.
Fifteen-year-old Jamie Renaud is one of the club’s top junior players. As a young child, she didn’t take to tennis or golf, but when her Canadian parents introduced her to curling at age 8, she was hooked. “I like the challenges it brings and the way you work with your team on everything,” she says.
The Broughton Magnet High School student practices every weekend at the club, and is a regular participant in club and junior bonspiels.
“It takes a lot of practice,” Renaud says. “You have to learn how to balance and get used to how much work it takes to sweep. The muscles you use in curling, you don’t use in a lot of other sports. After sweeping, it’s your upper arms that hurt. It’s also the muscles in your legs—when you’re pushing off, you need a lot of force.”
The nonprofit club has no full-time employees, relying instead on its members to handle everything from maintaining the four sheets of ice to bartending and serving food at events. The operation is self-funded, relying on dues and more than 100 corporate business rentals each season. “Being so close to RTP, we have a lot of [rentals, where businesses bring] their work group out,” says Sue Mitchell, the club’s marketing chairperson. “You get to throw a rock, you get to slide, you get to sweep.”
For some, the idea of an ice sport comes with an obvious barrier—shivering in the cold.
But Triangle Curling Club has that covered. Spectators watch from a warm room, where there are tables and benches—and snacks and drinks—for those who are merely there to support family and friends. And that’s OK, because socializing is part of the sport.
“So if you come out to watch, you don’t have to bundle up,” Mitchell says.
Check out more stories from around the Triangle at midtownmag.com.
