I Wanted to Avoid the Texas Heat, So I Joined a Curling League
As my 19th summer in Texas approached, I started dreading the inevitable heat earlier than usual. Each year, I considered options such as visiting my family in New York City during peak tourist season, getting a movie theater pass to watch every new release, or picking up a new hobby that takes place indoors. After noticing that flight prices were higher than usual, I had a brilliant idea for an indoor hobby. And not just any hobby, but the next best thing to standing in front of an open freezer in the middle of the summer — joining a curling league.
I’m no stranger to the ice. As an Asian American kid in the ‘90s, naturally, Kristi Yamaguchi and Michelle Kwan inspired me to take up figure skating, but a lack of talent and a few too many hard falls while attempting toe loops and scratch spins dashed my hopes of Olympic medals. Plus, a disastrous experience involving an outdoor skating rink in Buffalo and a mild case of frostbite ruined the appeal of figure skating as an adult hobby. Still, the ice called. I thought of the middle-aged athletes I saw competing in curling during past Olympics. It was probably the only Olympic sport an elder millennial with no hand-eye coordination and a fear of horses (I once had a traumatic incident with a horse at summer camp) could pick up at this age. After all, wasn’t curling basically shuffleboard on ice?
However, curling wasn’t a hobby I necessarily wanted to pursue on my own, so I sent group texts to every single friend group to see if anyone wanted to try out a curling class. I reached out to dozens of people, from my oldest Austin friends, who I refer to as the suburban mom friends, to a WhatsApp group for Austinites who participate in Timeleft dinners (the app sets dinner reservations for six strangers, and I somehow ended up in six separate Timeleft group chats that have anywhere from a dozen to a few hundred people). Since commitment issues are a natural part of adult friendships, as expected, I received some enthusiastic yeses, a few maybes, and a chorus of noncommittal texts stating, “That sounds fun.” A few weeks later, I registered six people for a beginner’s curling class through the Lone Star Curling Club to get a $5 per person group discount. Days later, two others let me know that they had also registered.
As the day of the curling lesson approached, two acquaintances flaked, but I still had a group of six women — mostly friends I had made through Timeleft — committed to picking up a new pastime. Since I’m chronically early, I was the first of my group to arrive at the ice on a sweltering June day, and I instantly noticed that the skating rink was full of millennial couples. Who knew curling was such a popular date activity? I awkwardly stretched alone by a wall in a large, heated room next to the rink because the person who checked me in suggested hamstring and quad stretches before the class.
Finally, it was time to learn how to curl. After a brief introduction to the sport and some safety lessons (don’t walk backwards on the ice, don’t pick up the stone, don’t die), we lined up to pick up brooms and shoe grips for one foot and were then placed on teams and assigned an instructor. The six of us cautiously shuffled onto the ice and approached our instructor, who assured us that we were going to be like Bambi on the ice at the beginning, but we would get used to navigating the ice by the end of the class.
What’s it like taking a curling class with six women, most of whom had MFAs or MBAs? We overthought everything and asked a lot of questions. And by that, I mean we asked so many questions just about the logistics of how to launch off the hack (I think that’s what that contraption is called) into a lunge to throw the stone that our instructor barely had time to explain the game to us [editor's note: the contraption does appear to be known as a "hack"]. We stopped just short of asking for the exact optimal force and velocity required for efficiently delivering the stone.
I still don’t really know the purposes of the lines on the ice or where I’m supposed to stand to start sweeping. But, I had my own strategy for learning how to deliver the stone — I purposely went last so I could watch and learn from my friends’ mistakes and know what not to do to avoid wiping out on the ice. By the time my turn came, my friend Jenny coached me through exactly what to do, and I was able to fling the stone a short distance without falling on my butt.
Eventually, we got the hang of the sport and played a couple of games. We had so much fun chasing after the stones on ice that four of us committed to joining the Sunday morning league. If we registered for the league on the same day as the curling class, we could get a 50% discount, and I figured that $60 was well worth it for four July and August weekends inside an ice skating rink. Plus, I would get to know my new-ish friends better, strange as it is to think that we originally met because an app’s algorithm placed us at the same dinner tables based on very basic personality tests. Maybe there really was something to that algorithm, since we were all open to trying an activity somewhat unusual for Texans like curling, and we all asked a lot of questions.
The next day, we realized that curling was a more physical workout than expected, as we were all sore. As someone who attends 3-7 yoga classes a week at a studio, I thought I was used to low lunges (Anjaneyasana), but apparently, low lunges on ice work muscles in an entirely different way than on a yoga mat. I think I’m going to have to do cardio and lift weights to actually become good at curling. Still, I’m looking forward to spending the summer on ice — maybe not in the way I had imagined when I was watching Michelle Kwan’s Olympic routines as a kid, but with a group of friends who will most definitely overthink curling strategies but will undoubtedly have a great time doing it. In the meantime, I need to watch some TikTok curling videos to try to figure out what the lines on the ice mean before the league starts.
