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DECEMBER/JANUARY 2011
Curling News UNITED STATES
USA Curling ... Dare to curl
College Curling Students continue to curl beyond academic careers by Rich Larko, College Tournament Coordinator
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n the last issue we talked about graduates of Northwestern University settling in areas with nearby curling clubs. Now two more students report accepting jobs, in Portland, Ore., and Minneapolis. This brings the number to 10 of the original Northwestern student/ curlers who have settled into their careers in areas where they continue to curl. Eight of these students never saw a curling stone before they began to play in the college program, with several of them coming from the southern U.S. Previous Northwestern grads are curling at Plainfield, Midland, Madison, Milwaukee and Denver. That’s more proof that college curling contributes to new dues-paying curlers
to the wonderful world of curling. The college curling season gets into full swing this winter. A regional event will take place Jan. 29-31 at the Bowling Green Curling Club in Ohio. We thank the BGSU Curling Club for hosting their regional championship event. As this is being written 16 teams are preparing to “get on the ice and play.” We’ll report results of the event in the next issue of the Curling News. In 1986 a small group of Illinois curlers, with support and backing by the Chicago Community Trust, formed a corporation and launched the National College Curling Program to provide quality instruction and competition for college students all over America. We saw that this age group had been virtually ignored by both regular curling clubs as well as various curling associations all across America.
After producing various brochures and a quality video for use by clubs and curlers alike, we also approached various schools to attempt to find faculty members who would help us. With little student demand at the time we made almost no progress securing school participation. Therefore, in 1992, we announced the inaugural National College Curling Championship event in Eau Claire, Wis. Five teams from four schools participated and had a great time and good competition. The event was won by a team from Eau Claire (it’s hard to beat the home club). A team and faculty member from Wauwatosa loved the concept and in 1993 we moved to the more centrally-located Wauwatosa Curling Club with 14 teams and more schools as the event caught on. After several years the event was moved to the larger
Dues and rosters deadline: Jan. 31 by Sandy Robinson, USA Curling
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SA Curling is again using e-mail to distribute our packet of information for filing membership rosters and submitting USA Curling dues for 2010-11. These notices are being sent to club and region treasurers, or to another officer if we lacked an e-mail address for the treasurer. The USA Curling roster and dues materials will also be available on our website at www.usacurl.org. The web announcement also will have information about prizes for submitting dues and rosters and completing our annual diversity survey by Jan. 31. Does your club start its season in the spring or summer? New this year, the deadline for roster reporting for clubs that begin their operations in the spring or
summer is Sept. 30 of that year. Because the rosters determined during the spring and summer carry the club through the next USA Curling season, dues payments will be based on that Sept. 30 membership. In concrete terms, here’s how it will work: This season the rosters on file as of Sept. 30, 2010, will be the clubs’ membership through the 2010-11 season, and will be the basis for the dues they submit by Jan. 31, 2011. Next season the rosters reported by Sept. 30, 2011, will be their membership for 2011-12, with a dues deadline of Jan. 31, 2012. If you operate spring or spring/summer clubs, notify Christy Hering at the USA Curling office if you will be following the Sept. 30 reporting schedule. She can be contacted at 1-888-2875377, Ext. 207, or via e-mail at christy.hering@usacurl.org. Our goal is to have an align-
The Funny Side
ment of membership and dues that reflects the most current roster and best meets the needs of our clubs and of USA Curling. We are asking all clubs to update their rosters online using USA Curling’s web database, www.associationdata.com. Please let us know if you need assistance at any stage of the filing process by contacting Hering by using the information above. A note for those updating via uploads: The file must be uploaded from the USA Curling office, so be sure to send your upload file to Hering via e-mail. The USCA Membership Database has been designed and built with the assistance of USA Curling sponsor Kodiak Technology Group, and will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our organization and members. Your suggestions for improvements to the database are welcome.
Madison Curling Club with six-sheet capacity. After several years in Madison, we again moved to a larger facility, the St. Paul Curling Club. By now the event was thriving with as many as 32 teams from all over curling land participating each year. After several years we again moved the event to the North Shore and Chicago Curling Clubs, located near each other in the northern suburbs of Chicago, where it has now grown to as many as 40 teams from 30 schools including Harvard, MIT and Boston College in the east, the University of Washington on the West Coast, Lake Superior College in the north, and down south to the University of Tennessee. In the 20 years of the event we have seen more than 600 student-teams from more than 130 schools participate in the tournament. Members of approxi-
mately 35 clubs have volunteered to work with student curlers. Clubs in six different cities have provided countless weekends for many years to host college championship events. In addition, we have sponsored countless regional events all across the country (to help save travel costs for teams). The names of hundreds of people who have volunteered their time and efforts to the College Curling cause are far too numerous to mention with the exception of our registrar and administrator, Dr. Robert Richardson of La Crosse, Wis., and Pam Oleinik of Brookfield, Wis., the “keeper” of our website for many years, as well as the directors of College Curling USA – the Illinois State Curling Foundation (Current directors: Steuart Tray, Phillip “Pete” Bowm, Art Helt, Ken Cooke and Scott Rahn).
COLLEGE TOURNEY Continued From Page 1
All teams compete with other teams at a similar level to ensure a great experience. The registrar for the event will once again be Robert Richardson. You can send entries to him, Richards.rob2@uwlax.edu or by regular mail at 3374 East Ave., La Crosse, WI 54601-7208. You can also contact him via telephone at 608-788-0595 if you have any questions. More information about the tournament also is posted online at www.collegecurling.org. The headquarters hotel for the tournament will be the Courtyards of Marriott Glenview. A guaranteed rate of $69 (plus tax) will be available for competitors. The rate is good until March 1 so make your reservations soon. Be sure to tell the hotel desk clerk that your team is part of the college curling event to get the room rate. The hotel address is 1801 Milwaukee Ave., Glenview, IL 60025 (847-803-2500). The future of the college tournament is uncertain. We started the college program 25 years ago in conjunction with the Chicago Community Trust, which provided much of our funding through the years. Now our main source of funding may make it impossible to continue the tournament after 2011. We continue to work on our funding challenge and will keep you apprised on our website and in the Curling News. We sincerely hope to continue to sponsor the college curling program and hope to continue the national tournament in the future.
Drake University students looking for equipment donations Drake University Curling Club recently formed as the first and only curling club in the state of Iowa. According to the club’s founder, John Maher, students have been practicing, but they’re in need of equipment.
“We had about 32 students at our last practice so we’re very excited,” he said. Clubs with extra brooms or other equipment can make a donation to Drake University by contacting Maher at john.maher@drake.edu.