Curl club connects Airmen

Published April 27, 2023
By R.J. Oriez
88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs

A man on one knee slides across ice holding a stone with a red handle on it. — Curl club connects Airmen

Brad Ashmore, Air Force Research Laboratory electronic engineer, starts his stone down the ice March 29, 2023, in Curl Troy league play at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. The league draws a number of players from the Wright-Patterson community, many of whom had been unaware of the curling opportunity in the Dayton area. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

Two men, one standing, one kneeling, curl. The kneeling one, on the right, has just released a curling stone. — Curl club connects Airmen

Brad Ashmore, standing, Air Force Research Laboratory electronic engineer, and Frack Predis, AFRL contractor, curl during a match March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. Both men said the strategy they saw watching the sport in the Olympics inspired them to try it. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

Two men use nylon pads on the end of broom sticks to scrub the ice in front of a curling stone. — Curl club connects Airmen

Brad Ashmore, left, and Jorge Villa, both Air Force Research Laboratory electronic engineers, lean into their brooms to help the stone down the sheet towards the target March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. About a fourth of the players in the curling are members of the Wright-Patterson community. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

A red stone, blurred with motion, is about to hit a blue stone. — Curl club connects Airmen

One team’s stone smacks their opponents’ stone out of the way during a curling match March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. One strategy to get a stone to be the one nearest the center of the house is to move the others out of the way. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

A woman stands with her hand extended out to her side as she looks down the ice. — Curl club connects Airmen

Karen Jordan plays the position of “skip” during an “end” of curling March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. Like most sports, curling has its own language. A skip is the player down near the “house,” or target, who signals strategy to the person throwing the stone. An end is the curling equivalent to an inning of baseball. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

People stand scattered across a hockey rink. Curling stones are arranged in the foreground. — Curl club connects Airmen

Members of the Curl Troy league take to the ice March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio, for an evening of curling. The hockey rink holds four sheets--or lanes-- so eight teams of four can play as a time. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

A man down on a knee, facing the camera, lets go of a stone as it slides away from him. — Curl club connects Airmen

Dean Severtson uses finesse to send his stone across the ice with the right rotation during a curling match March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. Rotation can cause the stone to travel a curved path towards the target which is what gives the sport its name. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

A man bends over with a broom scrubbing the ice in front of a stone while a woman stands nearby with another broom. — Curl club connects Airmen

Brian Ressler, right, scrubs the ice in front of a moving stone while Karen Jordan stands by to help during a curling match March 29, 2023, at The Chiller in Springfield, Ohio. Ressler explained the broom is used to melt the ice for a brief moment and help the stone move down the sheet. (U.S. Air Force photo by R.J. Oriez)

SLIDESHOW | images | Curl club connects Airmen

WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio -- Brad Ashmore competes in curling. You know, that Olympic sport where someone slides a rock across the ice while a couple of teammates scrub furiously in front of it with brooms.

The Air Force Research Laboratory electronics engineer plays in a league put on by Curl Troy and feels at home with other players.

“I think my story is about the same as everyone else’s,” Ashmore said. I saw it in the Olympics and was just kind of wrapped up in it, the strategy and the fact that it looked easy enough that I think I could do it and make the Olympic team. I can’t. It just kind of has the allure of seeing it on the Olympics and it’d be approachable.”

Ashmore is not the only AFRL Airman intrigued by the sport. Frack Predis is one of his teammates and thinks the sport fits well with a researcher/engineer persona.

“I like the strategy of it,” Predis said. “It’s not all just physical skill like a lot of Olympic sports. There’s a lot of strategy. I’ve watched it for years before I even knew that Brad was doing it, and he worked in the same office right down the hall. I heard them talking about it one day.

“I said, ‘You guys do curling?’ I stuck my head out of my cubicle. ‘Can I join?’ And that was that. It’s now my second year doing it with them.”

Brian Ressler, a Curl Troy board of directors member, was on the ice with Ashmore, Predis and 29 other curlers overseeing the competition as well as playing on one of the teams. He said the club got started in 2010 and has been promoting the sport throughout the Miami Valley.

The winter league normally plays at the Dayton RiverScape MetroPark, while spring and fall leagues meet up at a hockey rink in Springfield.

“Our goal is to continue to introduce the sport to as many people as we can,” Ressler said.

In a curling match, two four-person teams face off. They take turns sliding a 45-pound rock toward a target—called a house—at the other end of the 145-foot-long “sheet” until every player has thrown two stones for a total of 16. The player releasing the stone can give it a rotation, which will make it curl in a curving path—thus, the name of the sport.

The stone closest to the house’s center wins the “end.”

“You can think of them like innings,” Ressler said of the ends. “Whoever has the most points by the end of eight ends wins the game.”

But what is with all the sweeping?

“The goal is essentially to create a split-second amount of friction on the ice that, in theory, will help melt it,” Ressler explained. “It’s not going to create a big divot in the ice, but that will then allow the stone to flow a little bit further. It doesn’t go faster but it will go further; so, you can stretch how much further it goes.

“So, maybe, a throw is a little light and that stone isn’t going as hard as you want it to. If you really can get on that stone and sweep hard, you can drag it at least a couple feet.”

It is an unusual sport and that’s what Mike Harwat, an Air Force Life Cycle Management Center product support manager, likes about it.

“I like that it’s quirky and that in so many ways it doesn’t make sense,” he said. “So it’s cool, right? Because a lot of people (at work) will go what did you do this weekend? A lot of people say, ‘I golfed,’ and the conversation ends.

“But when you tell people you curl, that opens up a really fun dialogue. It’s interesting because a lot of people will go, ‘Oh, I’ve seen that on the Olympics. When are you going to the Olympics?’ No, I just do it for fun and recreation. But it’s always cool to hear people say, ‘You do that? They have curling in Ohio?’”