The end is nigh

The end is nigh. If you need further proof, consider this: the U.S. has its first Olympics curling medal in the same year the International Olympic Committee has decreed that baseball and softball won't be Olympics sports after the 2008 summer games.



Curling. Notice how it rolls off your tongue. Curling. It was the butt of many a joke in this country during the just-concluded 2006 Winter Olympics. But ponder this, those of you who keep track of such things and/or worry about them: had the U.S. men's curling team not captured the bronze, the U.S. would have wound up with 24 medals instead of 25 and been tied for second behind Germany with Canada for the most medals of the games. However, in order to win that bronze, the U.S. had to defeat Great Britain. So, I guess that means we'll lose one more ally in the war in Iraq. After all, according to my research, that part of the world was virtually the birthplace of curling.



In case you've been living under a rock - or curling stone - the last two weeks, curling is something akin to shuffleboard. A circular something - known as a stone - is pushed down a icy lane by one curler and then guided to the other end, where the scoring takes place, by two other curlers, wielding what those of us not in the know commonly refer to as "brooms."



The idea is to guide your team's stone into the scoring square, sometimes striking other stones already there, sometimes not.



The game is broken down into ends, something like innings in baseball. This is a direct quote from an AP dispatch from Torino, Italy, a few days ago: the Swedes played a conservative game to beat Switzerland with a double-takeout on the last stone of an extra end. I think that means something like "the Braves beat the Mets with a run-scoring double in their last at-bat in the 10th inning."



I give those curling team members this much: I watched about two hours total over the two weeks of the games and not once did I see a single one of them slip and fall on their keester and they walked, trotted, etc. back and forth up and down the ice, even while working their little brooms in from the stone. That's more than can be said for some of the top skaters in this year's Olympics.



There are 135 clubs that belong to the U.S. Curling Association - and more coming, according to the association's Web site. There are active curling clubs in 26 states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, and also in the Great Lakes, New England and mid-Atlantic states. (As a public service, below I have posted links to three of the curling Web site I used in researching information for this article. Consider it my gift to you.)



In the U.S. today, there are over 15,000 curlers; in Canada, 872,000 people play curling - 56% of them ten or more times a year, according to the Canadian Curling Association. But we have to be careful because the winning of a bronze medal by the U.S. men's team may do for curling what Tiger Woods' success on the golf course did for golf: create a spurt of interest in the sport among young people who had never even dreamed of picking up a golf club? Now there are youngsters all over the country whose moms could never get them to go near a broom who suddenly have other ideas.



"Mom, can I use the broom?"

"Sure. What are you going to do, sweep off the patio?"

"No. I need it for curling practice."



If they don't have a frozen pond or lake to use, kids will be marking off curling lanes in parking lots, greasing them down and using a rock they found next to the road and their brooms begin perfecting the fine art of curling.



This country will never be the same. Curling has arrived, but we won't have baseball and softball in the Olympics after 2008. The end is truly nigh.



(Ken Stanford is the News Director for WDUN NEWS TALK 550, MAJIC 1029, and SPORTS RADIO 1240 THE TICKET and Editor of AccessNorthGa.com.)