Bonspiel thoughts

Brian Wilson

Last weekend while volunteering at the Medford Curling Club for the Running Tree Bonspiel, I took the time to visit with some of the teams that traveled to play here.

As is often the case when it comes to the relatively small world of curling, there were people I have seen at previous bonspiels both in Medford and elsewhere. We swapped stories and shared memories of poor ice conditions or spectacular plays that grow in the retelling.

Other times it was an opportunity to meet new people and share our common bond of loving a sport played in a freezer sliding heavy polished rocks back and forth trying to make it to the center of a circle.

It was great to see Greg Major from the Houston Texas club bring a new Texas team to Medford this year. It is on my bucket list to get down to curl at their club’s bonspiel which is held in August.

I also got a chance to visit with the curlers from Appleton whose club sent four teams to the Medford bonspiel this year. I am going to try to convince my team (and more importantly my patient, kind and understanding wife) that we need to head over there in late March for their upcoming bonspiel.

Perhaps the most entertaining was the group from the Frogtown Curling Club in St. Paul. They noted that each year they try to get to a different club’s bonspiel. By the end of the weekend - and after several samples of the special maple syrup beverages on hand - we had them changing that to checking out other bonspiels in addition to coming back to Medford.

It may also have had to do with the almost reverential reaction the out of town teams had when it comes to the Medford Club’s massive and very functional fireplace, not to mention the care club members put into making sure the ice was the best it could be.

We put the fireplace to good use this year, not only cooking ribeyes over the hot coals, but setting a high bar on Friday night with maple seasoned wings finished over the fire.

In any sports tournament there is a division between those who are there to bring home the proverbial gold and with it the glory of victory.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are those of us who are there as an excuse to have a weekend away from home and meet some cool and interesting people. It is not to say that this second group is adverse to winning, or that we don’t get annoyed over missing what should theoretically have been easy shots to make. It is more that this other group recognizes that sometimes a victory can be found in getting on the scoreboard at all, and that swapping stories after the game is often the best part of the evening.

According to people who study such things, loneliness is a major and growing issue facing modern America. Most of us make our lifelong friends while young. We might meet them while in elementary school or perhaps playing on a sports team.

As adults, it is harder to make friends. Modern electronic devices have become our security blankets comforting us, but also preventing us from getting out and meeting new people and learning new things.

One of the reasons I enjoy curling, and especially going to bonspiels it is an opportunity to meet other people. Through the sport, I have made friends in places as diverse as Boston and Texas and Chicago and St. Paul and many places in between. I am sure bowlers, dartball players and others share much of the same experience of camaraderie with their activities and sports. Although I will say that quantifiably curling is cooler than those activities due to the very fact that it is played in a freezer.

My simple solution for most of society’s problems, would be for people to set down their controllers, cellphones and keyboards and head out and do something.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.