A Taste of the Olympics, Easy as Picking Up a Broom
By KATIE ZEZIMA
WAYLAND, Mass., Feb. 25 — For the last two weeks, Matt Durso's life has revolved around curling, an Olympic sport that he had never played and, to be honest, did not fully understand.
To better grasp the game, Mr. Durso, 22, a student at Lyndon State College in Lyndonville, Vt., and two friends woke up early Saturday morning and drove three and a half hours to Broomstones, a curling club in this town 18 miles west of Boston, to attend a learn-to-curl open house. "I've been watching every match every day," Mr. Durso said. "I've been obsessed."
And so, it seems, have millions of other people around the country who are becoming entranced by a sport many liken to shuffleboard on ice.
The United States Curling Association's Web site crashed on Feb. 16, when it received 12.5 million hits. The association said dozens of clubs around the country held open houses this month, capitalizing on the Olympic coverage, and many drew record turnouts.
Pete McCuen, the president of the Ardsley Curling Club in Ardsley-on-Hudson, N.Y., said traffic on the club's Web site had tripled in recent weeks and the club was busy booking corporate events and parties. In Los Angeles, more than 120 people have signed up in the past week to an Internet mailing list about starting a curling club.
Here at Broomstones, more than 1,000 aspiring curlers showed up for the five-hour open house, some waiting outside upwards of an hour in snow and temperatures in the 20's. "There's a lot of buzz out there," said Dan Williams, the club's president.
Much of that stems from increased broadcast time thanks to the sport's popularity in the 2002 Salt Lake City games. This year, NBC broadcast 26 Olympic curling matches. Through Thursday, 37 million viewers had watched curling, the network said. That number does not include the men's gold-medal match or the bronze-medal match, which the United States team won.
"People get hooked when they watch," said Bev Schrader, a spokeswoman for the United States Curling Association. "I think they're realizing the challenge, the finesse, and a lot of people are intrigued by the strategy."
The sport originated in Scotland and is extremely popular in Scandinavia, where the Swedish women's team was in a rock video, and in Canada, where "curling clubs are like bowling alleys," said Chuck Sharkas, a member of the board of directors of the Kettle Moraine Curling Club in Hartland, Wisc.
The aim of the game is to slide a 42-pound piece of granite, known as a stone or a rock, closest to the center of a bull's eye. The strategy comes in landing the stone nearest the center or in a position where it can block the stone of an opponent.
A player twists the handle of the stone to aim it. After the stone is cast on the ice, which is textured, two players preceed it and sweep the ice in front of it to control the angle at which its path bends, or curls, hence the name.
"It's kind of like chess, but with exercise," said Stephen Szczesniak, 30, a systems analyst from Marlborough, Mass., who attended the Broomstones open house.
Casting a stone is not easy, nor is running on ice while squatting and sweeping. But the sport can be played by people of all ages who dream about a shot at Olympic glory.
"I think at its core the reason why I really, really enjoy watching curling is I think it's the only chance I have at ever winning an Olympic medal in my life," said Ethan A. Brosowsky, an actor and producer who is part of the Los Angeles group. "You look at downhill skiing or bobsledding and say, 'I can never do that, not in a million years.' But with curling it's different."
Mr. Brosowsky, 24, watched the sport during the 2002 Olympics but really got into it this year, recording every match and staying up until 2 a.m. watching them. He and others worry that the cost of starting a curling club would be prohibitive. The clubs are like country clubs, with members paying several hundred dollars to join for the season, which runs from about October to March. A set of stones can start at $8,000.
But none of that appears to deter the fanatics. "I'm broke and I would absolutely do it," Mr. Brosowsky said. "I would spend my last dollar."
Avid curlers said one of the biggest draws of the sport was its social aspect. Tradition says that the winning team buys the losing team a round of drinks, and everyone sits around the bar and rehashes the match.
"There's a lot of civility in the game," said Dan Johnson, communications officer of the Dallas-Fort Worth curling club. "There's handshaking before and after. You call your own fouls. There's no referee. You're expected to abide by the traditions of the game."
"It just kind of hooks you," he said.
The folks at Broomstones, at the open house, were trying to reel people in. Aspiring curlers were taken onto the ice in large groups every 15 minutes, and each person got a chance to throw a stone. Mr. Durso volunteered to go first. He put his foot in a starting block, raised his hips and let the stone go, then turned around, raised his hands in the air and stepped off the ice.
"This is so cool," said Mr. Durso, who signed up for a learn-to-curl session next month. "Plus it's a very obscure thing to say you do."
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