Mediacom Ice Park – When Do We Get A Curling League?
February 1st, 2009
OK admit it – one of your favorite viewing pleasures during the Winter Olympics is always the Curling, right? With the background stories on all those clubs in Wisconsin where the understated backdrop is that like bowling, it’s best enjoyed with a few adult beverages.
So we already have one strike against us, to say nothing of the lost revenue since the Park District can’t sell adult beverages, but look at this story:
Nowhere in Brazil’s more than three million mostly tropical square miles is there a facility devoted to curling, the stone-and-broom sport played on ice that joined the Winter Olympics program in 1998.
The World Curling Federation allots two berths in the 12-team world championship to countries from the Americas, and in the 50 years of the event the lone representatives have been the United States and Canada. Only two other countries in the Americas belong to the federation: Brazil, which joined in 1998, and the United States Virgin Islands.
I say if Brazil can compete, so can Springfield. And there has to be available ice time at Mediacom Ice Park. I know of at least one downtown Barber Shop that’s prepared to field a team. Who’s with me?
Call 417-866-7444 and give them your opinion!
Update – the Wall Street Journal picked up on the article on February 3rd. They like the idea and added to it:
If you’ve forgotten your winter Olympics lingo, curling is the winter sport that’s sometimes called shuffleboard on ice or chess on ice, and thought to have started in Scotland in 1541. Last weekend Brazil, which doesn’t even have an ice rink, had its international curling debut in Bismarck, N.D. The four Brazilians only recently took up curling while studying at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. “According to their first coach, Judy Cassidy of the Lennoxville Curling Club in Sherbrooke, none of the four realized the heft of a granite curling stone (40 pounds) until they showed up to ask about lessons in the summer of 2007,” Pat Borzi writes in the New York Times.
The Brazilian four still have a ways to go. “They didn’t last long, losing all three matches in emphatic fashion, but kudos on their debut appearance nonetheless,” the Curling News reports on its blog.
A blog? What a great idea!
It was the 

