Marquette’s club curling team finishes up its drive to the Milwaukee Curling Club through the quaint downtown of Cedarburg, Wisconsin, littered with mom-and-pop shops and things that scream “I’m out of the city.”
Then, each member puts on their rubber shoe grips and is greeted with a chill from the ice.
Milwaukee Curling Club is around 30 minutes north of Marquette’s campus, so club members coordinate rides to and from practice and trade off weeks.
“I think that it’s always a good bonding experience when you drive somewhere with someone, a road trip away from campus; a little escape, which I think is fun,” Bella Ruffa, a junior in the College of Business Administration, said. “You get to know the people on the team a little bit better by driving out here.”
Additionally, Milwaukee Curling Club’s instructors offer advice to club members during practices, especially since most of them are newer to the sport when they join.
“I want as many people to experience the sport as possible, because it’s not an opportunity that’s available for most people, wherever they’re coming from. Milwaukee Curling Club makes it really easy for them to do it,” club president Jack Michaud, a junior in the College of Business Administration, said.
Because of this, the club is mainly made up of people trying curling for the first time.
“This is the mentality most people have coming here, ‘I’ll give it a try, let’s do something new,’ people who are really open to trying something new, really enjoy coming out to curling the most, and that’s mostly what our team is,” Michaud said.
But the members don’t just curl, as Marquette students also foster professional opportunities through the club’s connections.
“A lot of the members at Milwaukee Curling Club are pretty well-known figures in the Milwaukee business and legal community, it’s also a great networking opportunity for our team members. Some people have talked to members of Milwaukee Curling Club for internships, career advice — they’ve been very generous with their support for us,” Michaud said.
“They always encourage more college kids to come out, as they want to see the sport grow and want more people to experience it.”
The ice itself for curling is a lot less slippery than ice rinks used for skating or hockey, as the athletes have to master a balance between lower body strength and precision to push the curling rock in the correct spot, not too short or too far out from the bullseye.
Beyond typical practices, the team competes in matches, known as “bonspiels”, which can be against other collegiate teams, or older members of Milwaukee Curling Club.
“Just at our last bonspiel there was ‘Cosmic Curling,’ glow-in-the-dark here, we were playing up against 60- to 70-year-old people that have been curling their whole life,” Michaud said. “You get to meet a whole bunch of different people through the sport.”
Club vice president Sean Riter and Michaud said they believe that people coming together through curling is integral to the group’s camaraderie.
“Not many people know about curling before they come here, we’re all new at it. It’s something that we can all grow into together,” Riter, a junior in the College of Health Sciences, said.
As for growing the game around Marquette’s community, Riter said giving people a behind-the-scenes look at the club will help highlight the fun aspects about the sport.
“Taking videos of people going out on the ice, throwing stones, asking people about what they love about Marquette curling. This shows a fun, positive attitude we have with our social medias,” Riter said.
Through Milwaukee Curling Club’s networking connections, finding people across various groups around campus and through social media is how the club has grown itself on Marquette’s campus itself.
This article was written by Mikey Severson. He can be reached via email at [email protected] or on Twitter/X @MikeySeversonMU
