By Ben Hoppe
Feb. 24, 2018, is one of the most important days in United States curling history, and like many others in the country, it is an important day in my personal curling history. It's the day that began my curling origin story, and the day I realized I lived just over one mile from a curling club in Green Bay, Wisc.
It took nearly eight months from the day Team Shuster won gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, but the instant I threw my very first shot during a Learn to Curl class, I was hooked. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had been searching for a new home away from home. As the rumble of the rock reverberated off the walls of Green Bay Curling Club, I had found it.
It took no time for curling to hook me in, but it wasn’t so much the sport itself as it was the community that had grabbed a firm hold of me.
It was the community at Green Bay Curling Club that gave a new, passionate, but struggling curler some much-needed coaching. It was the community at Lone Star Curling Club that gave me a friend group when I didn’t know anyone as I moved to Texas and helped me move when my wife accepted a job in Utah a few years later. It was the group of 5-and-Under curlers (adult curlers with five or fewer years of experience) who gave me a place to savour competition as an amateur with like-minded individuals. It was the community of curlers across the country who read, subscribed, and shared my newsletter, where I focused on the grassroots competitive club curlers.
The curling community in the United States is a special one. While it is not large, it is incredibly interconnected and fiercely passionate. For some, that passion means driving long distances to curl on hockey or speedskating ice because that’s the only option they have. For others, that passion means doing anything and everything to watch any bit of curling online or on TV due to the lack of broadcast coverage outside of the Olympics. The dedication to the sport here is not talked about enough.
The potential for curling in the U.S. is dry timber just waiting for a spark to become a roaring fire. We saw it in 2018, and that surge of new curlers to the sport brought great progress as new facilities were built and other facilities started to max out on space. But coverage has been sparse, and for many, their connection to the country’s top curlers has been what they can see on a livestream or what they’ve heard directly from the curlers themselves (or a mutual friend), and not much in between.
That’s where I come in.
I want to give back to you, the curling community, to help you stay connected to the best of the best in the U.S. From their performances on the pebbled ice to their successes and challenges off the ice, I will be working to fuel your passion for the sport and its people.
While my coverage for Rock Channel will be mostly remote, I’ll be working behind the scenes to make sure you don’t miss a beat. From the Grand Slams to the Winter Olympics, from the U.S. national championships to Rock League, I’ll be making sure you can stay connected. I will strive to be the one-stop shop for all things USA Curling news and notes. And for those who have enjoyed my coverage of grassroots competitive curling over on my Stones & Stripes newsletter, I plan to keep that going as well with the same type of coverage as last year.
The curling community has given me an incredible amount of support in my relatively short time in this sport, and I look forward to giving back to you in hopes you can find the same joy as I do with every draw, tap, and hit from the best of the best. You deserve it.
