Curl up and glide

The curling stone spins like a top, a red-handled, 42-pound dervish.

“When they spin like that, they don’t curl as much because centrifugal force takes over,” Mark Curtis yells from the other end of the ice. His instructions fly over the ice rink in the direction of novices, gathered together on a Tuesday morning for a team-building exercise.

And that slight curl, the way these stones draw slightly toward the opponents’ stones, or toward the center of the target some 100 feet away, is what the game is all about. The name of the sport is curling, after all.

“OK, Kaitlin, not bad, but it’s not going to be hard enough,” Curtis says in the direction of a young woman with a gray peacoat and a headband protecting her from the cold of the ice below her feet. Just as Curtis predicts, the stone stops several feet short of the target, far enough away it is deemed out of play and removed from the path of the next stones to be thrown.

“Oh, you’re going to like this one,” Curtis exclaims as another Acumen Brands team member slides a stone down toward the 12-foot-wide, blue-and-red target coloring the ice at the Jones Center in Springdale. Curtis has a five-member group he’s working with while fellow NWA Curling Club member Christopher Barber works with the other team. They’ll compete soon, but right now they must learn the method of pushing off from the starting point, called a hack.

The block looks like the kind runners start from, except this one has the added disadvantage of being affixed to ice. A stabilizer stick or a curling broom helps the thrower’s progress, but slips to the ice come with the territory.

The stones veer right, left, short, long and all manners of directions that do not involve landing in the center of the target circle.

No one expected to be curling this morning.

Ben Roberts, director of brand operations for Acumen, just yesterday afternoon told his team members he’d booked some time on the ice as a team-building exercise. No one expected it to be this difficult, either.

SWEEPING MOVEMENTS

Curtis, dressed for the part in a black jacket with his last name and the letters “USA” on the back, gathers to tell participants the other part of the game they’ll need to know if they expect to score any points. An accurate shot is only one part of the equation; sweeping the surface just in front of the moving stone also plays a major role.

“This is where the physicality of the game comes in,” Curtis says. It’s not advisable to question curling’s legitimacy as a sport in front of Curtis. He knows it’s a two-mile walk for each game. He knows the weight of the stones. And he knows the exertion involved in sweeping.

Those who forget curling takes place on the ice are in for a lesson when it comes to sweeping. Curtis explains the movements resemble the way a basketball coach might teach his team to play defense. Your feet slide sideways at the knees, one leg first and the other following closely behind, he says. Curtis shows off the move, sliding gracefully. He certainly cuts the figure of an athlete, slender even in his winter jacket and moving with ease that belies his 62 years.

The sweeping affects the speed of the stones, Curtis tells the group. Because the friction of the brooms lightly melts the ice, and because wet ice is more slick than dry ice, the sweeping aids the stone’s progress. Curtis pushes a stone down the track, then has everyone in the training group give it their best effort.

“The more pressure you put on, the better sweeper you are,” he says. The group of five obliges, wagging the brightly colored broomsticks with colored pads at the ice’s surface. How far the stone carries beyond its original mark is hard to determine in this case.

The Acumen Brands teammates will need all the help landing in the center they can get.

GAME THEORY

The team members stay with their mentors in preparation for the upcoming competition. Curtis appoints roles for the members of his group, the one that will compete against the one headed by Barber. He draws up the order of throwers, but himself takes on the role of skip, the team captain who guides strategy, throwing speed and direction.

Four members usually make up a curling team. The two teams alternate throws, meaning strategy comes into greater play later in the match, when a team may decide to aim for the center or instead attempt to knock away an opponent’s stone.

The match sounds a bit like a thunderstorm. The low rumbles of the heavy stones creates a drone, and cracks commence when two of them collide. And there’s the shouting.

Curtis allows the rookies to make all the tosses. And his team has five members instead of four, because everyone gets to play today. They won’t get through all 10 ends, which are similar to baseball innings, but everyone will throw.

Curling is a game of many traditions, and some of those such as team size will be ignored today. One of the important ones will not be broken, Curtis insists. Before each curling match, the opposing teams wish each other good luck. Later, the winners traditionally buy the first round for the losing team.

That kind of post-game revelry often lasts as long as the actual contest, which takes about two hours.

Pleasantries are exchanged between coworkers here. In this case, lunch at the Catfish Hole is on the line. The gold medal game of the Acumen Brands versus Acumen Brands challenge is about to begin.

POINTS TAKEN

On a day where professional curlers in ridiculously patterned pants are competing in the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, two teams of local marketing analysts participate in their first curling match ever.

Kaitlin Chandler is the first to throw a stone for her team, and Curtis wants it right on the button - quite literally, as the center of the target is called the button. It’s a circle with a radius of only six inches, making it a snug fit for a stone. The entire scoring area, called a house, is just 12 feet in diameter.

Another stone comes down the line, and part of Curtis’ role includes deciding its speed. Those coming at the right speed get no treatment.

Those coming too fast push off the board and end up out of bounds. Those far too slow must pass what is called the hogline, or the minimum distance to be considered a legal shot - those that barely pass are useful as blockers. But those a fraction too slow get a different treatment.

“Sweep!” yells Curtis, and two team members race down the track alongside the moving stone, polishing an invisible pathway. The stone settles in, and his team has a counter, or one close enough to the button that it is considered a point. No stone thrown by Team Barber upsets Team Curtis’ mark, and since it’s the closest to the center, they are awarded a point. One- or two point rounds are common, and only one team scores in each end. Total domination would be an 8-0 mark; Curtis says something like that happens about six times a year nationally. In his 50 years of curling, Curtis had an opportunity to close out an 8-0 end only once. He missed the shot, and he still thinks about it.

Maybe he’ll have the chance when he travels later this year to compete at the World Rotary Curling Championships in Aberdeen, Scotland. But right now, he’s got a team to coach.

In a second end, Team Barber can’t counter with a point, but Team Curtis can’t add to its total either. The stones keep speeding by the target.

“This way must be downhill,” Curtis tells his trainees, all the while telling them to glide the stones more softly.

Competitive spirits run high. Adam Miller of Team Barber stands at the ready to sweep his teammates’ stones into the button. He threatened to ice up his driveway last night to practice, but mostly he stands motionless today, watching the stones sail by, too fast to require his broom strokes. His feet, covered by tennis shoes so he has some semblance of grip on the ice, are numb. He wonders if that’s normal for curlers.

There’s not enough time remaining in this two-hour session for everyone to throw the standard allotment of two stones, so Curtis decides everyone will get one more throw. Because his team maintains the lead, his teammates go first. Now a full hour into the training session, the throws are better. Several are in the house. Team Barber only had four team members to Team Curtis’ five, so Barber served as the skip, therefore allowing him the last shot. It arcs down the path, ever so slowly, eventually nudging one of the other team’s stones farther away. With the closest two stones belonging to Team Barber, and no more to throw, those two points simultaneously prevent a shutout and secure a victory.

There must not be much bad blood between the two teams, because they pose for a picture as a group on the way out the door, the scorecard in front of them.

Some will likely never curl again. Some might watch curling on television, as the women’s and men’s Olympic finals take place on Feb. 20 and 21, respectively.

As a final thought, Curtis wants them to know there is a third option.

His NWA Curling Club has open ice every Sunday.

AT A GLANCE Northwest Arkansas Curling Club

The Northwest Arkansas Curling Club meets from 5 to 7 p.m. Sundays at the Jones Center in Springdale.

Typically, meetings involve lessons for new players running simultaneously with a match. To find out more about the club or about booking it for an event, call the Jones Center at 756-8090 or Mark Curtis at 925-2628.