While mild winter weather was expected to reach into the 70s on Saturday, a couple dozen people huddled inside the Peachtree Curling Association facility in East Cobb, bundled up in jackets and pullovers.
“Sweep! Sweep!” shouted Canadian Olympic gold medalist Jamie Korab during a clinic at the club’s climate-controlled building behind the Marietta Ice Center and Parkaire Landing Shopping Center.
Inside the building, the temperatures are 45 degrees. On the nearly two inches of ice that extends over 9,000 square feet, it’s 25 degrees.
While the Winter Olympics continue in South Korea, the Peachtree club is using the occasion to spread the gospel of curling, and it’s one that several members admittedly have been soaking up in recent years.
One of them is Jessica Sammis of Lilburn, who commutes regularly to the only curling rink in Georgia. She got interested in curling after watching the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, which sparked greater interest below the Canadian border (curling became an official Olympic medal sport in 1998).
“It’s a very approachable sport,” said Sammis, a former PCA board member.
Not only are the equipment costs low, she said, “this is something that you can come out and start learning to do in a short amount of time. But it takes a lifetime to master.”
In curling, participants aim a 42-pound stone down a straight line, for a distance of 148 feet, scoring points for how close they can come to placing the stones in the center rings at the other end of the ice.
Altering the direction and the speed of the stones is where the sweeping comes in, and Saturday’s clinic broke down the fundamentals in very elementary ways.
After learning how to “throw” the stone—which is polished granite and made in Scotland, the sport’s ancestral home—participants were instructed in sweeping. While the motion looks similar to what you might do at home on your kitchen floor, the equipment isn’t something you can pick up at a retail store.
“This is the only sweeping I do,” joked Sammis.
She was among the organizers of the Peachtree Curling Association, which got started in 2015, and then got word that a youth hockey rink behind the Marietta Ice Center might be closed.
The curling group offered to turn the rink into a dedicated curling facility. After the building was donated, more than 40 volunteers worked to bring it to curling specifications.
The non-profit Peachtree Curling Association is one of 165 curling groups in 43 states, according to USA Curling, and has around 75 members. Nationwide, the national governing body claims 20,000 members.
“The vast majority of our club members started after the Olympics four years ago,” said Bob Hogan, current president of the Peachtree Curling Association. What he likes about the sport is how it draws participants of all ages, and that range was evident at Saturday’s clinic.
He’s played with his family, including daughters in their early 20s.
The U.S. has only one medal in curling, a bronze in 2006, in a sport dominated at the international level by Canada and northern European nations. Exposing youngsters to the basics is a major component of USA Curling’s outreach.
Sunday’s clinic for kids ages 11-18 will take place from 2-5 p.m. and is free.
Other adult clinics continue Saturday at 3:30 and 7 p.m., and the cost is $30 a person.
The group also offers beginner (101) and intermdiate (201) clinics during its “season,” which continues into May. The building is closed during the summer, and reopens in October.
The Peachtree Curling Assocation is located at 4880 Lower Roswell Road, Suite 910.
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