The club curling team ended their season with a 3-0 sweep vs. Notre Dame. Photo courtesy of Mitchell Adams.
DAVID JACOBS | SPORTS CO-EDITOR | drjacobs@butler.edu
Butler is home to over 200 student organizations that range in size, with one of the smallest being the club curling team. Using the Circle City Curling Club as their home ice, the club of just eight members competes in matches — both intrasquad and against other universities — from October to April.
While the roster is small, and some on campus may not even know they exist, the tight-knit group of curlers has shown immense growth over the last two years.
When club president Brianna Massey, a junior secondary education major, took over the role, she saw a lot of changes that needed to be made.
“I have always loved the curling culture,” Massey said. “My freshman year, the only thing the club was [doing was] just playing games… which wasn’t really allowing anybody to get better. When [vice president] Jessie [Gross] and I took over, we were able to rework [a deal] with Circle City [Curling Club], and that allowed us to dig deeper into all the skills to help everyone.”
Senior actuary science major Micah Bohnenstengel even credits Massey — who has been curling since she was just nine years old — for most of what he knows now in the sport.
“I really like the aspect of her being a player-coach,” Bohnenstengel said. “I learned a lot from that. With the bonspiels [this year] we got to meet a lot of other teams from different areas and those are a lot of fun.”
The bonspiels, or, in layman’s terms — a curling tournament — have helped bring a needed level of competition to the club, with returning members seeing improvements from this past year.
The winners of the matches are determined by the highest score after a set number of ends — comparable to a baseball inning. The number is typically set at eight for the collegiate club level and 10 in the Olympics.
Mitchell Adams, a sophomore sports media and strategic communication double major, sees the added competitions as a stepping stone for the club.
“The step up from a competition level last year to this year has been really big,” Adams said. “We played in a lot of bonspiels and had a really successful run, better than I thought we were going to do through some of them.”
One of the bonspiels saw the mighty bunch end their season with a 3-0 sweep against Notre Dame on March 29.
Sophomore economics and supply chain double major, Mindy Smith, was proud of how far the club had come this season.
“I was really proud of our performance in all of the [matches],” Smith said. “We competed more this year and even when we didn’t win, we were close.”
With so many of the club’s members joining the sport in college, it gives the team an added sense of accomplishment with each achievement, knowing that most members are still learning and growing into the sport.
“It’s easy to learn and hard to master,” Bohnenstengel said. “As you start to curl more, you get a better sense for what shots [to use] and develop the ability to be a lot smoother.”
Post-college and over the breaks, many members look forward to joining curling clubs in their own respective cities.
“There are a lot of clubs in big cities,” Smith said. “If I stay in Indy, I plan to keep playing. If I go home, I know St. Louis has a club.”
While many on campus are not familiar with the club, it is a welcoming sport for anybody to join. With limited athletic ability required and a great sense of community throughout, club curling may be Butler’s best-kept secret.
“Curling is a very fun and accessible sport,” Adams said. “I think a lot of people on campus just don’t really know we exist, we would love to get new people to at least come out and try it.”
