Next generation of curling enthusiasts hits the ice

PHOTOGRAPHER: Marc Schultz

Little Rocks is a Schenectady Curling Club program for the youngest of curlers, aged 6-11. Little Rocks is held every Sunday with instructors on hand. Alex Samaniuk watches as Heather Black tosses the rock.

Share on Facebook

Save

The first thing the Little Rocks of the Schenectady Curling Club do when they head down to the ice is show off their dance moves. In their Nike and Adidas sneakers, the young curlers shimmy, twist and moonwalk their way onto the ice.

Every Sunday since mid-October, nearly two dozen of the budding curlers have met up at the club’s Niskayuna facility for 90-minute lessons and more than a few competitive games.

After a few quick practice throws, the competitive juices quickly turned to a curling match.

“Right now it would be zero to zero, because none of them are in the house,” Michael Tchernev, 9, explained as he watched his competitors’ stone slide toward the house, a group of concentric circles that mark the curlers’ target.

“Keep going,” he urged the stone as it slid through back of the target. “Yeah!” Still no score.

Michael and his three teammates took the ice next. Kneeling in the hack with his left hand gently clenching the handle of a large granite stone, Alex Samaniuk, 9, pushed down the ice. After sliding about 10 yards, he released the stone, with an imperceptible amount of twist intended to give the stone enough torque to dance, slice and curl its way around a field of “guard” stones, strategically positioned to block the path to the house.

Following through with his left hand pointed exactly toward his aim point, Alex watched as his teammates Parker Wheeler and Heather Black, both 9, shuffled alongside the stone, sweeping the ice in front of it to reduce the friction.

As the stone approached the house, it started to slow and settled a few feet from the black circle that marks the exact center of the target. Alex shrugged — a slight miss.

“Nice throw,” said Caitlin Janiszewski, a volunteer coach, doling out tips and encouragement as she kept the young players on track. “He’s so good; he gets a little frustrated when he doesn’t make a perfect shot, but I tell him he’s never going to make a perfect shot in his whole life.”

The team of all 9-year-olds took a one point lead, but their opponents came back and landed a stone in the house on the next throw. So Alex took to the house, where as the team leader — or skip — he directed Heather’s next shot. As the stone neared the house, he called out with a forceful command to his other two teammates to ease it along.

“Sweeeep!” he told them before reversing direction as the stone inched toward the center of the house. “Up, up, up,” he said, putting an abrupt end to the sweeping as the stone settled just inches from perfect. “Yeah!”

Victory!

Across the ice sheet, another group of Little Rocks practiced, and youth organizer Jeff Brewster took players one-by-one to practice close-range techniques and other skills. Some of the Little Rocks were in their second year while some were new to the game. During the fall and winter, there are two seven-week sessions for the youth curlers — at a cost of $50 total.

They start with ice safety and simple sliding before advancing to stone releases and techniques for getting the stone to shift and move across the ice just the right way. They start into the matches soon after, teaching the kids curling strategy and gamesmanship. The sport relies on special etiquette, with players calling penalties on themselves.

“Within the first two sessions, the kids are curling,” Brewster said.

Despite the usual youthful antics, the kids appeared to be studied practitioners of the sport. Alluding to the sport’s nickname, “chess on ice,” Heather said she enjoys the problem-solving and strategy involved in the game.

“I like to play math puzzles at home,” Heather said. “You sit there and say, what helps me win? Oh, this helps me win.”

“I like the challenge,” Michael said. “I like the challenge of curling; I like the skill.”

And they take their winning seriously, too. But in the second game of the day, Michael and Parker counted their eggs before they hatched.

“Green won again,” Parker said as she stepped off the ice.

“Well, it’s not over,” Janiszewski corrected her. “You have two more stones.”

“Oh,” Parker amended herself. “Well, so far we are winning.”

It came down the last shot — just like the game before, Parker pointed out. But this time the other team, using yellow stones, scurried a winning shot down the ice, knocking a green stone out of the house and taking the game.

Another lesson learned.