SEATTLE – Though the hotbed for American curling is the upper Midwest, there are pockets of interest in other areas of the country.
One is right here in the Puget Sound area, and this week the Granite Curling Club in north Seattle is hosting the 2007 Curling Junior Nationals. The event, put on by the United States Curling Association, includes four-member men’s and women’s teams for ages 20 and under, including a Washington team comprised largely of young women from Snohomish County.
Representing Washington are 20-year-old Ashley Carson of Lynnwood, a 2005 graduate of Meadowdale High School; 20-year-old Katie Higgins of Lynnwood, a 2004 graduate of Jackson High School in Mill Creek; and 16-year-old Marissa Wright of Mukilteo, a junior at Kamiak High School.
The fourth team member is 19-year-old Katy Sharpe of Seattle, a 2006 graduate of Ingraham High School.
All are members at the Granite Curling Club, the only exclusive curling facility on the West Coast, and all got into the sport because they have family members who curl. Carson, for instance, had parents and grandparents in the sport, “so I’m a third-generation curler,” she said.
There are an estimated 1.5 million curlers in the world, with about three-quarters of those living in Canada, where the sport is hugely popular. Teams at the U.S. junior nationals represent those states where it is most popular in this country – Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Alaska, Utah and Washington.
The sport, which is a little like shuffleboard on ice, “is harder than it looks,” said Carson, who is the captain – or skip, in the language of curling – for the junior national team.
“Curling is not physically stressful,” she explained. “You don’t feel beat up by the end of it. But it still requires skill. It’s more about finesse, precision and hitting the same target every single time.”
“You don’t have to run the mile in six minutes to be able to curl,” added Wright.
Becoming a good curler requires “being willing to put in a lot of time,” Sharpe said. “I never really understood before how much strategy there is. You have to be really smart and know a lot about the game. There’s a whole lot more to it than I ever thought there was.”
“I like it because it requires just as much individual effort as an individual sport, but it’s still a team thing,” Carson said. “There’s still a team bond.”
The junior nationals open with a round-robin format for the eight women’s teams (there are nine teams in the men’s competition). That continues through Thursday, with the top four teams advancing to the semifinals on Friday and the championship finals on Saturday.
The Washington women’s team opened with two losses in round-robin play, but rebounded on Monday with a victory. The team hopes to reach the semis, but realizes they are facing some very strong competition, in particular Minnesota and Wisconsin. Minnesota, in fact, opened the tournament with a 12-0 win against Washington.
Minnesota and Wisconsin “are the two biggest curling states in the nation and their teams are always really strong,” said Carson, who is making her fourth junior nationals appearance.
Curling is an Olympic sport, and at the Turin Games last year the U.S. men’s team came through with a surprising bronze medal. The U.S. women’s team struggled, though, and America’s hope for a better showing at Vancouver in 2010 could rest with some of the young women who are competing in Seattle this week.
Because of her age, this is the last junior nationals for Higgins “and I would love it if we could win,” she said. “But that means we all have to play perfectly, and somebody is bound to have a bad day. I just want to know that we curled well.”
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