How one man’s fascination with curling came about

Published 1:30 am Thursday, February 9, 2017

It was in November of 2015 when USA Curling announced that the 2017 national championships would be held at Xfinity Arena in Everett. The moment I found out I was on the phone with my editor:

Me: “The curling national championships are coming to Everett in 2017. Do you have anyone to cover them?”

Him: “No.”

Me: “You do now.”

While I’ve spent more than 20 years as a sports writer, marveling at the athletic virtues of our modern day gladiators in an arena where bigger, stronger and faster are the qualities we trumpet, I have to admit to having a soft spot for curling, a sport that seems better suited for engineering PhDs than hulking behemoths.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the traditional American sports. I was the kid who played football in the fall, basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. My primary beats have been covering hockey and football, two sports in which the collisions are so violent the players are required to wear helmets and pads.

Yet I find myself fascinated by a sport in which the only collision occurs between 42-pound stones as they glide gently along the ice. How did this happen? I suspect that many who follow curling in the U.S. have an unusual story about how they discovered the sport. Here’s mine.

The Everett Silvertips hockey franchise debuted in 2003, and I was hired by The Herald to cover the team. While I didn’t travel with the team during the regular season, I did during the playoffs, and the Tips did very well in the playoffs those first few seasons. That had me booking two-night stays in remote Canadian prairie towns such as Cranbrook, B.C., and Medicine Hat, Alberta, in April — with little to occupy my time during the days.

So I found myself flipping channels on the television in my hotel room when I came across this marvelous spectacle of sliding stones, flying brooms and furious shouting. You see, April happened to be when the Canadian curling championships were taking place.

Curling? I’m not sure I’d even heard of it before. Indeed, the whole idea of throwing rocks down the ice and frantically sweeping in their path is inherently ludicrous, especially to someone who spent his entire life immersed in the traditional American sports world.

But I was mesmerized. There was just something about it — calculating the angles, determining the correct weight upon release, figuring out the right moments to sweep to correctly guide the stone — that sucked me in. I sat transfixed in front of the TV for hours, watching the commentators using the telestrator to discuss the best options. It was hypnotic.

And the best part was that it was being broadcast on CBC, which happens to be available to cable subscribers in Western Washington, meaning I was able to continue my viewership upon returning home. It was a dark day in the Patterson household when CBC was outbid for the curling broadcast rights by TSN, which is unavailable in the states.

I may no longer be able to access the Canadian curling broadcasts, but I still watch curling when I can. I’m a religious viewer when the Winter Olympics roll around, and I try to catch the rare broadcasts when they pop up on obscure cable channels.

I’ve even been curling twice myself. The Granite Curling Club, located in north Seattle and the host of this year’s national championships, holds an annual open house during which non-members can receive instruction on how to play. I have battle scars from my experience, having embarrassingly face-planted on the ice while attempting to sweep. My cousin, who accompanied me on one of the occasions, received high praise from a club member when, after he also fell while sweeping, he lunged to knock the fallen broom out of the path of the still-advancing stone.

Now I’m no expert on curling. If you ask me who should be favored to win in the upcoming men’s and women’s competitions, I have no answer. If you ask me a strategy question, such as whether the shooter should throw the in-turn draw to the button to lie one, or attempt a double takeout in an effort to lie three, you’ll receive a blank stare in return.

But I can say from personal experience that being an expert is not required to be an engaged spectator.

So if you have a chance over the next eight days, come on down to Xfinity Arena and check out the curling national championships. Most days the action takes place from early in the morning until late at night, so it shouldn’t be difficult carving out a window. It’s not often Everett plays host to a national championship, so this is a rare opportunity to observe the best the country has to offer in a sport.

And perhaps, like me, you may even come to like it.

For more on the Seattle sports scene, check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/tag/seattle-sidelines, or follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.