October 2016

After Midnight

by Barney T. Haney

I thought there would be beer. A midnight curling club in the Midwest in the middle of winter? Come on. Tammy tells me again, in earnest, that curling is about the people. Inside, I groan a little. It’s Friday, opening night of the Circle City Curling Club’s spring league. I’d envisioned bearded hipsters pontificating over microbrews, pushing free tastes.

We’re at the Artic Zone Iceplex just north of Indianapolis in Westfield. The small arena hosts junior hockey leagues and open skates and, most recently, a curling club. I know next to nothing about curling. I have worn dress shoes to stand on the ice for the next two hours. Tammy, an avid curler and the club’s treasurer, leads me between the 147-foot sheets, which are far longer than they appear on television. Skippers shout for their sweepers to brush harder, willing them with the depth of their howls. Throwers launch themselves to the left and right of me. A man in a faded Superman ball cap with a salt-and-pepper ponytail cascading past his shoulder blades blurs past in an impossibly graceful yoga-like position that resembles the pigeon. Sweepers work at blinding speeds mere centimeters off the stones with sweat dripping from the ends of their noses. Stones roar down the sheets, growling like jets flying miles overhead. The vibration rumbles through the ice. There is no pause, no let up, no time to drink beer. I’d assumed that curling was a glorified version shuffleboard. This is sport!

Tammy introduces me to the club’s members. The Circle City Curling Club is very white, but otherwise covers a surprisingly vast demographic. Club members ages range from 10 to 70-plus. They are hippies, golfers, college coeds, retirees, a doctor, a chemist, an insurance auditor, a sports psychology professor, an architectural photographer, a bagpiper, those whose knees bend, and those whose knees don’t. There is a single bearded hipster among them and he turns out to be one of the most competitive.

“Why do people join?” I ask Tammy.

“I don’t know,” she says and smiles as if this is a wonderful thing, and it is.

It’s impressive, this blend of generations and genders. The Friday Night League is made up of 19 males and five females. Scores are tight across the board, and the sportsmanship is uncanny. It’s been my experience that competitive sport leagues are often petri dishes for buried hostilities, but there’s not a whiff of sizing-up to be found.

Steve, a slim, middle-aged man, shows me his Apple Watch. His heartrate is 176 beats/minute. He’s burned 200 calories after a mere half hour of sweeping stones. He averages 8,000 to 9,000 steps in a match, which equates to roughly four to four and a half miles.

“Sweeping miles,” he corrects.

“I can’t feel my feet,” I tell him.

“You’d stay a lot warmer if you were working,” says Barb, a 70-year-old with a stylish short, spiky silver hairdo. Barb is an icon in the club. She and her late-husband, Jack, were instrumental in getting the CCCC started. Now she emails her kids when she gets home to tell them she made it and is drinking her Sambuca.

By the end of the night, I am exhausted. Steve finishes at 525 calories burned. A 20-something compares his Fitbit calorie count of 517. The stones are stored and brooms are packed away. We bid one other good morning and head out. On the drive back to my apartment, I pass cops clearing the revelry off the strip, the feeling slowly returning to my feet. When I get home, I Google Sambuca.

 

I am invited to a broom-stacking! Should I go? Yes.

Broom-stacking is curling code for beer drinking. It’s a weeknight and I have to teach early the next morning, but I find it disgraceful not to honor this new phrase.

The host’s smile tightens when I enter the Ram Brewery. I’m not well. She keeps one eye on me while craning her neck to locate the bouncer. The roads are a mess. On the drive, a semi coated my windshield in greasy road slush then, to my horror, the deicing washer fluid sprayed out the side of my car’s hood. I navigate the last six miles of heavy highway-traffic through a two-by-eight-inch swath, gripping the wheel so hard I think the airbag will deploy. No one is going to be here, I tell myself. I should have texted. I should have called ahead.

“I’m supposed to be meeting the curling club,” I tell her.

Her face softens. She leads me toward the riotous noise coming from the back of the bustling brewery. Around the corner in a narrow dining hall the tables have been arranged into a long row. The scene is like a village come to honor the curling gods with a fried tenderloin and stout feast. They hurl stories down this ceremonial sheet and roar with laughter.

Club President Dan introduces me to the team he’s taking to the Curling Senior National Championship in Medford, Wisconsin. Our conversation revolves around chicken feet, embryo transplants, North Dakota State football, dairy cows, southern Minnesota, inner China, fecal samples, curling on cruise ships, pension plans, hologram houses, and dedicated ice.

Competitive curling happens on two types of surfaces: arena ice or dedicated ice. Arena ice, which the CCCC curls on, is your common public skating rink ice. Often uneven, its surface tends to change from day to day, sheet to sheet. Stumbling kids’ skates leave gouges too deep for the Zamboni. These conditions are difficult for even the best of club’s curlers to overcome and make it nearly impossible to finely calibrate one’s game. Dedicated ice, on the other hand, is an art form. High-quality water is essential (reverse osmosis or deionized water is preferred), the ice is leveled, pebbled, and kept at an exact temperature for optimum stone performance. Perhaps the most significant distinction between dedicated ice and arena ice is its influence on how a curling club visualizes itself. Dedicated ice is swagger. Dedicated ice makes a club thrive. Its all-access ice time allows a club to offer “learn-to-curls” — cash and recruitment cows — at family-friendly times. It opens opportunities for hosting bonspiels (weekend-long curling tournaments) which bring revenue to the club and to local vendors, creating incentive for sponsorships. Most importantly, it has the potential to save the CCCC from extinction, which, Dan tells me, is a troubling reality. Attendance is down 40 percent from the fall. The late-night ice time is taking its toll. Recently the club’s board has had to shift its focus from building the club to sustaining it.

Dedicated ice would likely change the clubs’ circumstances in dramatic ways, but getting there isn’t easy. The cheaper ice-making machines start at $350,000 and the special curling Zamboni can cost $13,000. Then there’s the land, the housing facility, the insurance. It’s a Herculean task, and without strong membership the chance of a club’s acquiring dedicated ice is bleak. The Artic Zone is the fifth venue the CCCC has called home in the last 10 years. The recent return of minor league hockey to Indianapolis has rejuvenated the city’s youth and adult hockey leagues. Arenas compete for the revenues amateur hockey brings. The CCCC has been left with the choice of curling at midnight or not at all.

The ceremony at the Ram Brewery ends with hearty rounds of embrace and plans to meet again. When their ice times were better, the CCCC gathered here after curling each week to analyze their matches over cold ones. Now they meet here once a month for dinner. There’s a genuine sweetness about this that resonates with me. I clean off my windshield in the parking lot and the roads, though no less messy, somehow seem not as bad.

 

There is an open sheet this Friday night. Tammy invites my wife Molly and me to “Learn to Curl.” It’s long been a desire of Molly’s to curl. Tammy and her husband Wes, a certified instructor, will be giving us this clinic. Lisa, a petite woman in her late-50’s, who will compete with Tammy at a bonspiel in Fairbanks, Alaska, later this month, will join us for extra practice.

Wes is shy. He has the trunk of a rugby player and keeps his elbows tight to his sides as if to apologize for taking up space. Despite the cold he wears a white cotton T-shirt and black synthetic workout pants that stop short of his ankles. Tammy met him at a hockey game. He introduced her to curling. After her second lesson, they competed in a mixed-doubles bonspiel in Nashville, placing second. At their wedding, the ring bearer carried their bands down the aisle on the pad of her curling broom. Tonight, Wes seems nervous. It is obvious that he has a specific idea in mind, and that things must be just right: “Please, Barney, stand over here. Just a little more, please. Stand over here. Now over here.”

I feel as if I’m having my picture taken. I move a step to the left then another then another. I don’t dare laugh, nor do I look at Molly, who I know is busting up inside. I step to the right and, thinking that I am back where I started, I move to the left a little.

“Over here, please,” Wes says. I step over there.

In 2010, watching the Winter Olympic curling from our couch in Lake Charles, Louisiana, I tell Molly, this is our chance. My dream of Olympic Gold suddenly seemed tangible. Schuster’s American team looked bad. Curling looked easy.

Now, six years later, with a stone finally in hand and my foot snug against the hack, the sweet scent of gold returns to my nostrils. I rear back, push off, and immediately lose control of my body, wobbling as helplessly as a toddler, my legs begin to spread further and further apart, an unpleasant strain makes itself known in my nether region, and just before I fall flat on my face, I desperately heave the stone forward only to watch it stop short of the hog line—the required distance to count as playable.

“That’s alright!” Wes yells from the opposite end of the sheet.

Curling is far more challenging than it seems. Learning how to deliver a stone reminds me of learning how to pitch a baseball. All that concentration on form and movement only to see that ball fly out the side of my hand. My next stone torches the house, threating Wes’s ankles. A little less weight, he coaches. Don’t forget to turn the handle, Lisa says. Ten to 12. Two to 12. Balance, Wes says. Get your butt up. My legs tremble from the strain and a tender bruise is forming on the inside of my left knee.

Molly, a former hurdler and triple jumper, goes next. It is my job to sweep for her, naturally. Here I think I will do well. Sweeping is something I’ve done plenty of.

“Harder!” Wes shouts from behind the house. “Harder!”

My pressure or pace? I don’t know. Panic sets in. The eyes of the club are upon me. My broom head is going to foul the stone any second. Get closer, Lisa says. Sweep faster. The 147-foot sheet turns into the road to forever. By the time I make it to the end of the sheet I’m pulling my coat off. Sweat runs down my legs. Steve’s Apple watch is full of shit. This is far more taxing. Molly’s stone sits in the house’s 4-foot ring — what an angel. I’m winded and my legs burn from the awkward shuffling. She goes on to throw a house party. I stink up the place and have a ball doing it. Curling takes precision and balance and calibration. My brain and body can’t quite put it together. Lisa, who’s been encouraging all night, looks me square in the eye and says that my struggles are probably due to weak thighs. Thank you, Lisa.

 

Late-season and club attendance is down. Those that show move languidly toward the nearest chair with little more than a grunt of hello. We’re watching “Curling Night in America” on a flat screen in the breakroom, waiting for public skate to end. A man with winter in his beard laments that moments earlier he was watching this in his living room, warm and in a comfy chair. Below us, on the ice, the teens couple-skate to Journey’s “Faithfully” under cosmic black lighting and spinning strobes. Ceaseless waves of shrills crash upon the rafters. Somewhere down in that beautiful chaos a drop of sweat forged by the heat of two young palms is freezing on the ice. Curling cannot compete with this in Indianapolis. Not yet. The Butler University team arrives trailed by a student film crew. Their energy is electric, but separate. They don’t interview any of the other club members; not that anyone seems to mind. Some subs show up, including a College National Champion from the University of Tennessee, who raises some eyebrows and a few grumbles. The skin under Tammy’s eyes has turned a shade darker since I’ve met her. She talks financial strategy with Adam, a fundraiser at nearby Wabash College. They’ve located a potential space at a casket warehouse.

“I told the board members I will take change,” Tammy says. “Clean out your piggy banks!”

The club is desperate to have dedicated ice before the 2018 Winter Olympics. Olympic-generated interest has historically created significant spikes in curling club memberships across the country. It’s what inspired the CCCC founders. But even ardent supporters find it hard to overlook a midnight playing schedule. The club is making a high-stakes gamble, but it may soon lose itself if not for attempting the impossible. Tammy tells me they’ve raised $50,000. If they can double it by the end of 2016, they hope to start bidding on facilities.

Hope can be a source of tension. Tonight it’s getting the better of Tammy. I ask Jeff, the club’s co-founder, about the possibility that their dedicated ice vision is “A Field of Dreams” fantasy. If you build it, I ask, will they come? He tells me a story about nagging a sports editor at The Indianapolis Star to do an article on the club in 2009.

“I kept calling him, saying, ‘Hey, we’re curling and, you know, do you need a story?’ He said, ‘Nah, eh, and uh,’ then finally he says, ‘Look, it’s a rainy day story.’ Well, a month or two later, it was just pouring down outside, right? So, I get on the phone and I call him and I’m like, ‘Hey, look out your window.’ So, he relented. He said, ‘Fine, fine, fine.’ So they came out and they did a story on us and it became a big front page deal on a Friday or Saturday, I can’t remember, but, man did it get a lot of play. We had a curling clinic promoted in the article, scheduled for two or three weeks later. Typically, for a clinic we get between 15 to 20 people, so we estimated for like maybe 50 to 60 people coming. I think we had between 250 to 300 show up; I lost count. We had two hours for that clinic. It was basically, walk on the ice, this is what a curling stone looks like, next! We didn’t have a chance, we didn’t have a prayer of doing anything. We had no clue that it was going to be that popular. It’s funny. A lot of our members were at that clinic.”

Later, I will find out that Jeff contacted every last person who came that day and rescheduled individual curling clinics for those who were still interested. Impossibility be damned—I like their chances of getting dedicated ice.

The last of the teens return their skates. The Zamboni slugs over the ice leaving a slick trail behind it. I stay until the hacks are screwed down, then wish them luck and head for the exit. I’m 10 feet from the door, when someone bangs the on the Plexiglas behind me. Two of Jeff’s teammates haven’t shown, they’ve got a sub on the way, but would I curl a couple of ends till she gets here?

What the hell.

To be fair, I give them full disclosure about my lack of ability. They smile and nod. The tiredness they had in the breakroom is gone now that we’re on the ice. You’re up first, they say. I get my right foot in the hack, butt up, eyes forward. I don’t think about it. Jeff gives me a target and thrust: I am balance and grace. The stone rotates in a fine arc as if the ice is a canvas, the line a painter’s stroke. Into the house it goes, finding a cozy little room in the front half of the 4-foot diameter, igniting an explosion of heckling. My stone scores the lone point of the first end. The next end, I place one on the rim of the button, then set a guard. Again, my stone scores. It’s glorious, this feeling. I don’t want it to end. Jeff’s sub shows up and—best of all—it is Lisa. I’m all redemption song: “Look at what these weak thighs did!” I yell and point at the scoreboard.

“I’m sorry,” she says, confusion in her watery eyes, “do I know you?”

 

Barney T. Haney teaches English at the University of Indianapolis and is an editorial assistant for Sport Literate. His work has appeared in Fiction Writers Review and Mid-American Review.

To learn more about  the Circle City Curling Club, check out their website.