Curling Club of Virginia member Ryan McGhee and the author pair up to throw and sweep the curling stone.
If you’ve been watching the curling competitions during the 2022 Beijing Olympics thinking, “I can do that,” you’re not alone. Before they ever ventured to the rink to throw a stone or brush the ice, most members of the Curling Club of Virginia sat on their couches with the very same thought.
In fact, the club, founded in 2011, counts heavily on the Olympics as a way to recruit new members. “It’s called the Olympics bump,” says Bobbie Todd, who started curling after watching the Sochi Olympics in 2014. “Every four years, we see a surge of interest in curling.”
Todd, who was living in California in 2014, got interested in curling “because it looked like something I could do.” She had previously been into fencing, but an injury took her away from the sport. She found the curling community to be welcoming, though she was surprised to find that the sport itself “is a lot harder than it looks.”
On moving to Richmond, she joined the Curling Club of Virginia, knowing it would be an easy way to make friends. Today, Todd, who is Black, serves on the diversity and inclusion task force for USA Curling to welcome others to the sport. “We are trying to get curling clubs to reflect the communities they are in,” she says.
Though the Curling Club of Virginia has been on hiatus since the start of the pandemic, it is reactivating just in time to take advantage of interest fostered by the Beijing Olympics. On Feb. 18, 20 and 26, it will offer newcomers a chance to try the sport with a series of two-hour Learn2Curl sessions, providing instruction in safety, basic curling techniques and rules, and more than an hour of practice time on the ice.
At a preview for Learn2Curl, club member Travis Hamilton provided a quick rundown of curling basics in the lobby of Richmond Ice Zone, the club’s home base. After reviewing safety precautions — walk slowly, “like a penguin,” on the ice, and if you feel yourself falling, don’t flail, roll into a ball; better yet, don’t fall — he demonstrates basic technique for throwing a curling stone, a 42-pound polished granite disc with a handle affixed to its top.
Club member Travis Hamilton
A curling match comprises 10 ends, which are like baseball innings, during which the four players on each team alternate throwing a total of 16 stones. The team with the most stones closest to the button (bullseye) is awarded points. Only one team can score during each end.
Throwers start at a hack, which is similar to a starting block on a track, planting their right heel against it and crouching. A Teflon slider placed underneath the left foot helps it to glide, and the left leg is stretched back into a deep lunge. The thrower places their right hand on the stone and raises out of a crouch for a brief moment before pushing off the hack and gliding across the ice, releasing the stone before reaching the hog line, which is 21 feet from the hack. Beginners hold a stabilizer bar against the ice in their left hand to help with balance. It takes some practice.
Ryan McGhee, who has been curling since 2010, says it gets easier as you build muscle memory for the task. “It is a very unnatural position, he says, “but I haven’t had anyone come to Learn2Curl who, after an hour and a half, wasn’t ready to start in a beginners’ league.”
The sweeper shuffles beside the stone once it is released, sweeping furiously with a broom in front of it to help guide its trajectory. “The sport is called curling because the rock curls as it goes down the ice,” McGhee says. “You can put a turn on it when you release it, and the sweeper can make it turn more.” In a curling match, all players throw the stone and serve as sweeper on various turns.
The Virginia Curling Club places those who are new to curling on teams with other newbies or distributes beginners equally on teams with more experienced players. “We want it to be fun,” McGhee says. “We are not here to have people losing 10-0. Our goal [as a club] is to grow. We welcome all newcomers. … You can get started at any age, and you can play at any age. I’ve gotten my butt kicked by teenagers and octogenarians. Everyone is on the same playing field.”
The club meets for two hours once a week for matches. Because its time on the ice is limited, there are no practices — people learn and master the sport as they play. Club members compete among themselves locally, with some members traveling to tournaments, known in curling parlance as “bonspiels.”
Hamilton, who grew up in Manitoba, Canada, started curling in middle school, when he learned how to play in gym class. He learned about the Curling Club of Virginia from his mother, who still lives in Canada, after she saw a report about the Richmond club on Canadian TV during the 2012 Olympics and called to let her son know about it. He’s been a member ever since.
McGhee got interested in curling during the 2006 Olympics while he was living in Oklahoma. He and his roommates drove to Texas to try it out, and by 2010, Oklahoma had its own curling club, which he joined.
“My favorite part of the sport is the social aspect,” he says. “I moved to Richmond in 2016, and the first thing I did was join the curling club. You have time between shots to talk to your teammates, so you can get to know people. And our club tradition is that the winning team buys the first round after a match.”
Never miss a Sunday Story: Sign up for the newsletter, and we’ll drop a fresh read into your inbox at the start of each week. To keep up with the latest posts, search for the hashtag #SundayStory on Twitter and Facebook.
