The Ottawa Curling Club is offering beginners professional and personalized coaching in a Getting Started League, but dramatic demand has left the league with a 22-person waiting list.
“This boom is because we have been able to make curling fun and make people feel involved in the club,” says Joe Pavia, the club’s director of business development.
Last year, the pilot project began as an attempt to try to make curling more accessible to the public.
Earle Morris, who coached the Australian national men’s team and his two-time world junior champion son John Morris, was hired to coach the new curlers. Eight other experienced coaches also provided personal training.
Now in its second year, Pavia says the program has successfully bridged beginners into competitive leagues.
“A few years ago a beginner may have come in, received five minutes of tips from another player, got frustrated, and quit,” says Pavia. “Now they become members and keep getting better.”
The 60 beginners received coaching beginning in Oct. 9, and now the teams are ready to play.
Bruce Bartleman, 54, signed up for the league with his son and says everyone is still learning and dealing with bruises and bruised egos.
“It’s good fun, but it can be hard work for an old man,” says a laughing Bartleman.
Pavia says people are retiring earlier and aging baby boomers are starting to curl.
The fact that the sport is largely a matter of practice and skill while remaining relatively easy on the body helps make it enjoyable for older adults.
Claudette Goodhue is one of those self-described older people.
“I’m 64,” says Goodhue in a whisper.
You won’t see her screaming or yelling “hurry hard” like the professionals as she throws the stone up the ice. Curling can be intense, but Goodhue has a constant smile that pushes her cheeks and wrinkles her eyes as she curls. She learned to play in Saskatoon when she was younger and just picked the game back up last year when Getting Started began.
Although many middle-aged and older people enjoy staying active in the sport, Pavia is quick to point out that the curling is increasingly appealing to young people who have seen it on television. He says the prominence of Canadian television coverage of curling is making more people curious or interested in the sport.
John Wall, 19, who prepares the ice for the Tuesday night beginners league says it’s great to get beginners and young people involved in curling. Wall started curling when he was eight and says there were not many young people at his hometown rink in Arnprior.
This difficulty finding teammates his own age has continued as Wall spent his past curling season with a junior team in Toronto. He has one year of junior curling eligibility left and says he plans to keep playing long past that.
Wall is studying Recreation Facility Management at Algonquin College and hopes to run his own curling club one day.
“What’s important is growing the game across Canada, just making it easy and fun for anyone to get involved” says Wall.
The Getting Started League has definitely developed curling here in Ottawa and Pavia expects the Canadian Curling Association to try to spread the practice across the country.
“We’re developing a course curriculum for the CCA so that curling clubs across the country can have a Getting Started League,” says Pavia. “The whole country can capitalize on the increased interest in curling.”