Curling is one cool sport, y'all

As if the sport of curling doesn't seem weird enough by itself, consider that the players wear shoes with the slickest of Teflon soles.

On ice.

So they are extra slick for better sliding.

At a recent "Learn to Curl" session at the Factory in Wake Forest, instructions came with a strong warning to not try to walk on ice wearing Teflon.

"We would not want to send anyone to the emergency room," said Rich Collins, president of the Triangle Curling Club.

For a reporter in the audience who is training for a marathon, the threat of having to go to the emergency room was reason enough to avoid the game and instead practice her spectating skills.

But a handful of intrepid beginners accepted the challenge and marched onto the ice, prepared for whatever dangers awaited them.

Sure enough, before the night was over, an experienced player wearing a Teflon shoe had slipped. His entire body went straight up in the air, and he landed flat on his back with an ice-rattling thud. Like a true athlete, he was up and playing again faster than a sacked quarterback in the Super Bowl.

"I grew up in Canada and curled as a kid," said Katy Harper, 28, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, who had traveled to Wake Forest with Joe Romeo, 29. "We love all things Canadian, and we love cold weather."

The sport's origins

Curling started on the lochs and marshes of Scotland in the 1600s.

Today, the game is played indoors with 42-pound polished granite stones, which players slide from one end of the playing sheet to the other. They aim for the center of a bull's eye, called a "house" in curling lingo.

Curling became an Olympic sport in 1998 at the Nagano games in Japan.

Today, more than a million people across 35 countries play, and it is most popular in Canada.

Curling involves teams of four people who take turns sliding eight stones from one house, or bull's eye, to the other, a distance of 138 feet.

Each pitcher braces against a wooden block, or "hack" and in a motion that mimics bowling, delivers a stone down the ice where two other teammates are waiting with brooms that resemble Swiffer-style mops.

Using the brooms, they sweep the ice ahead of the stone in an attempt to smooth a path for it to go farther in a desired direction.

Teams score points when their stones make their way closest to the button in the middle of the bull's eye.

To casual viewers, curling is a strange-looking sport that appears easy.

"It takes more energy and stamina than one would assume," said Derek Greenfield, who was curling for the second time. "The hardest part for me is not falling on my behind."

He first saw the sport while watching the Olympics years ago.

"It looked like fun, and I thought I'd like to try it, but I never knew where to go to learn," he said.

Local curling club

The Triangle Curling Club started in 1995 and is up to 60 active members, Collins said.

Ice time in Raleigh is hard to come by, especially during hockey season, so the club plays at the Factory on Friday nights at 9.

"We hope to have a dedicated curling facility in the future," Collins said.

Besides Wake Forest, the closest curling clubs on the east coast are in Knoxville, Tenn., and Laurel, Md.

Harper and Romeo, who were on the ice for the first time, had made significant progress by the end of the evening, going from slipping, sliding and toppling over to playing a game.

Harper was proud.

"We made a lot of progress tonight," she said. "This would make a great husband and wife activity."

Jeff Turnham has been curling for three years and is addicted to the sport's camaraderie and challenge.

"You can learn to curl in 20 to 30 minutes," he said. "But it would take another 20 to 30 years to get good at it."

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