Hammer time

Curling stones are made of granite—they’re meant to endure, season after season. In Brookings, curlers say that sense of durability extends beyond the ice, shaping a club where friendships are just as hard to break.

“I appreciate the community I’ve started to build in Brookings and at tournaments,” says Matt Rustman, who moved to Brookings in 2019 and is a board member and curler with the Brookings Curling Club. “It’s like going to see old friends. Building a network and family of curlers is a lot of fun.”

Tony Teesdale, a Brookings attorney and firefighter who also serves on the curling club board, agrees. “I’ve been curling with the same group of guys who are all now my best friends.”

That sense of camaraderie is part of what the club hopes to showcase in its third annual Jackhammer Spiel, a curling tournament that will bring 24 teams to Brookings from a five-state area. The tournament runs Feb. 27 through March 1 at Larson Ice Center. Admission is free for spectators, and the event also features local catering, a full bar, prizes, music, and other entertainment.

Derek Schmidt, president of the Brookings Curling Club, says the club hopes to make curling accessible and encourage others to try the sport.

“It’s a great way to have fun during the winter.”

Teesdale appreciates the accessibility of the sport; once the player learns it, they can enjoy it for years. “I do not have time in the day to train to be a rock star at a sport. With curling, once you learn the basics, you just generally get into the flow of it.

Combine that with the sportsmanship component, and it’s a really enjoyable time.”

In curling, two teams of four slide stones toward a target, with points awarded for the closest stones to the target. Schmidt compares it to shuffleboard on ice—although he says curling is perhaps more nuanced. He remembers watching the first and only U.S. curling team to win Olympic gold in 2018, sparking spectators’ interest in the sport ever since.

“The U.S. had never been prominent in curling, but then they won gold—just a team of guys from Duluth, Minnesota,” Schmidt says. He attributes Americans’ increasing interest in curling to the fact that curlers often look like “regular people, not super-athletes. They’re just regular folks who excel at a simple game.”

Teesdale says Olympic athletes are usually competing in their sports at fitness levels that are unattainable for the average person, but this is not the case with curling. “The people who do curling look like real people. You think, ‘That’s something I could do.’ Watching the Olympics, you never get that idea from any other sport.”

Olympic curlers also draw huge television audiences because the sport is so unique, according to Teesdale. “The stone concept itself is unique, along with the scoring aspect and the strategy—I call it ‘chess on ice.’ There’s so much technique to it, and when you see it on a professional level, you realize people can really get dialed in to it. There’s way more to it than just sliding a rock down a sheet of ice.”

The sport gets a boost in popularity in the United States every time the Winter Games roll around, and 2026 has been no exception. With the competition early in the games, the rules relatively easy to learn and the competitors looking like regular folks, it’s often a fan favorite, especially by those digesting the sport on their phones.

This year, the American mixed doubles curling team made a strong run, finally dropping the Olympic finals to Sweden to earn a silver medal.

Both the men’s and women’s teams from the U.S. were in medal contention at press time, with the young American men pulling off an 8-5 upset of Sweden in pool play to stay near the top of the table.

For non-Olympic athletes, curling is easy to learn, Schmidt says, but it takes “a lifetime to master,” making it a great sport for all ages. He encourages teams to sign up for the Jackhammer Spiel even if they don’t have much experience with the sport.

Cost is $300 for a team of four. The club can provide equipment like brooms and shoe grippers for anyone in need.

Curling Terms:
Stone or rock: the granite piece that glides across the ice. They weigh between 38 and 44 pounds each.

Skip: the team leader and strategist; he or she tells the sweepers when and how to sweep, helping direct the stone toward the target. When the skip is delivering a stone, the vice-skip directs the sweepers.

Broom: the athletes sweep ice in front of the stone, heating the ice slightly and affecting the friction between the stone and the ice.

Curling ice is pebbled, not smooth, thus the need for sweeping to help the stone glide and to extend its path.

House: the scoring target for the stone; the center circle is called the “button.”

Broomstacking: the literal meaning is the stacking of brooms on the ice to signal the end of the game. The social meaning is the post-game gathering off the ice to share stories, laughs, and a drink. Wooden Legs Brewing Company in Brookings is the official broomstacking location for the Brookings Curling Club.

The “Jackhammer Spiel” is so named to reflect the spirit of the Brookings community and SDSU (“Jack”) and the “hammer,” which refers to the advantage of throwing the last stone in an end (like a period) of a curling game. “Spiel” comes from the Scots word “bonspiel,” which means “good game” or “tournament.” Curling has deep Scottish roots.