Tonight, the U.S. Men's Curling team secured a spot in the Olympic semifinals at the 2022 Beijing games to be held later this morning. Good on them!
Even cooler is that they are the defending Olympic gold medalists, a first-ever gold for the U.S. Men's team in curling. How awesome would it be to see a repeat!
So, here's a story ...
I love curling. I'm a self-professed fanatic. And here's why.
In a galaxy long ago and far, far away, I was a young pup sports reporter at the Bemidji Pioneer, in a city where some consider curling a religion.
No lie, part of my job each week was to write up the local curling leagues' weekly boxscores and team standings. ... Yes, that is correct: multiple leagues' standing. ... Yup, absolutely true. We published that sports gold right there. ... I had the curling beat people!
And then, in the year 2000, Bemidji played host to the U.S. Junior Curling Champions at the vaunted Bemidji Curling Club, a throwback facility that conjures up images of dark, wood paneling, wall-to-wall shag carpet in the lounge, cigarette vending machines, and lots and lots of neon beer signs. Something straight out of the '50s ... maybe '60s at the latest.
Because I was the paper's resident staff "expert" on curling, I was tabbed to go cover the bonspiel, curling's term for a tournament.
Seriously; no lie. ... For more than week, I would go to the curling club in the morning, watch the kids curl all day long from the lounge that overlooked the facility, drinking "adult beverages" with their parents and sneaking out to the parking lot for ciggy butts (It was a different time folks!) in between ends.
The moms who dutifully packed their families food for the day would feed me, and the dads would ply me with drinks, all in the effort to get their kids' names into the local paper. As a broke, young reporter, I was more than fine with that, and I never told them that their kids' names would have made the paper anyway. ... But let's just keep that between us, as I wouldn't want my then editor Kelly Boldan know my secrets.
Then, at the end of each day, I'd gather my interviews, grab a stats sheet from the fine U.S Curling folks on site, and head back to the newspaper office to write up my stories. There was no mobile reporting back then folks, a thing we can't fathom now.
The biggest surprise happened on Day 2 when I was approached by the U.S. Curling folks who read my stories in the local paper, liked them and said something to the effect of, "Wow! Your curling stories are da bomb! Can we reprint them on our website as our daily coverage of the bonspiel?" ... At least that is the best recollection of the conversation I have, as the curling dads had an affinity for Canadian Windsor early in the morning. ... And get this, the curling folks even offered to pay me!
Well, this was 2000 after all, and we wise newspaper folks knew that the web was a fad, so my editor didn't much care if they republished my stories and made me their onsite daily correspondent of the championship.
So there I was, a reporter only a few years into my career, getting paid to cover a sport a I knew a tad better than camel racing, while double-dipping as a correspondent for the U.S. Curling Association, being fed free food by the team moms and free booze by the team dads, and then getting invited to the nightly after-parties at the curling club lounge when I finished writing for the night. Meanwhile, my writing was getting published on the fairly young internet on the U.S. Curling Association's website, and I was receiving groupie emails from curling fanatics from all over the country. ... All in all, pretty heady stuff!
It is one my single, greatest memories from a 20-year newsroom career. And I still have the newspapers clips that I can pull out every four years when the Olympics showcases this crazy wild niche sport!
So, when the U.S. Men's Curling team faces off with the No. 1 seed Great Britain early this morning, please give them a shout out in my honor. These are all four really good dudes, three of which reside in the Duluth area, and it would be utterly awesome to see them return to the Gold Medal Game for a second, consecutive Olympics. ... Go USA!
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