SEATTLE – Brady Clark is used to the puzzled expressions, the blank stares. It often happens when he mentions that his sport is curling.
Then, sometimes, he will see recognition on the other person’s face. And he will hear them say, “Oh, do you mean weight lifting?”
At which point Clark will smile and go on to explain a sport that is little seen and largely misunderstood in the United States and most places in the world. Except for Canada, that is, where curling is more popular – at least among participants – than basketball, baseball, football and probably every other sport except, perhaps, hockey.
“Curling is a mainstream sport up in Canada,” Clark said. “But if you say curling here in the U.S., a lot of time people have no clue.”
There are, it is estimated, 16,000 curlers in this country, with most residing in geographic pockets where the sport has caught on. The largest of these is the upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota, but the sport also has a following in places like Seattle, home to the Granite Curling Club.
Here, curlers of all abilities and ambitions gather. Some are raw beginners, drawn to a sport that may seem odd at the outset, but ends up being challenging and darned fun for anyone willing to give it a try. Others are longtime curlers who compete in leagues at the Seattle facility as well as larger events around the U.S. and Canada.
In fact, one of the nation’s best teams is from the Granite Curling Club. As it happens, the four team members are all from Snohomish County – the 28-year-old Clark, who lives in Lynnwood; Jason Larway, 35, also of Lynnwood; his brother Joel Larway, 37, of Mukilteo; and 44-year-old Wes Johnson of Everett.
The four are top-seeded for the 2006 U.S. World Team Trials Qualifying Round, scheduled for Jan. 5-8 in Boston. From there they hope to reach the U.S. Nationals, March 4-12, in Bemidji, Minn.
“If we play well, we fully expect to win our pool (at the qualifying round) and go back to Bemidji,” Clark said. “I think we’re one of the top two or three teams in the United States, and if we’re playing well we like our chances a lot.
“We definitely have the ability, and now it’s just a matter of putting it together and playing well at the right time,” he said.
Clark, Johnson and the Larway brothers also have Olympic and world championship goals. The Olympic Trials for the 2006 Games in Turin, Italy, were held earlier this year, but the four, competing on different teams, did not qualify. Clark was on a team that placed third, the Larways seventh and Johnson 10th.
Another member of the Granite Curling Club, Doug Kauffman of Lynnwood, was on U.S. national championship teams in 2001 and 2004.
There are an estimated 1.5 million curlers in the world, with some 1.2 million residing in Canada. The rest are scattered around the globe, with the U.S., Japan, Scotland and Switzerland having 10,000 or more curlers.
Johnson, who was born outside of Edmonton, Alberta, said curling “is more than a sport in Canada. It’s like high school football in Texas, where you go to the game on Friday night and everybody hangs out there. In Canada, the curling club is the place to hang out.
“The question Canadians have is why curling isn’t more popular in the States,” he added. “And that’s the question I have, too. It’s such an interesting sport. Anybody any age can come out and have fun with it.”
Like Johnson, many American curlers have roots in Canada. For instance, though the Larway brothers were born in this country, their parents are native Canadians. And Clark’s wife Cristin, also a top curler, was born in Canada. They met about seven years ago at a curling club in Grand Forks, N.D.
“Coming from Canada,” he said, “she, of course, was a curler. So we started curling together and within a month we were pretty involved.” With a laugh, he added, “I don’t know if it would have worked without curling.”
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