Hlas: Curling is precision, passion, finesse, fun

CEDAR RAPIDS - Four women from Pittsburgh battling four women from Hollywood with 40-pound granite stones. On ice. In Iowa. In July.

That's not the description of a straight-to-cable movie of dubious quality. No, it's something a good bit more cerebral and sporting.

We're talking curling here. A sport you have probably noticed during every Winter Olympics, but probably haven't encountered in your travels.

The USA Curling Arena National Championships are in the middle of their 4-day event at the Cedar Rapids Ice Arena. The semifinals and finals are Sunday.

It's truly a national event, with a total of 32 women's and men's teams from as far as Atlanta and San Francisco.

Curling came here just a couple years ago, and the Cedar Rapids Curling Club has 65 members. It wants more, and you may be more capable of playing than you realize. The sport covers a wide age range, its players don't have any prototypical body type, and it doesn't involve ruthless aggression or grave danger.

'It's a friendly sport,” said Cindy Wood, an architect from Tarzana, Calif., and a member of the Hollywood Curling Club (They call themselves 'The Bond Girls.”) 'There's not a lot of bashing each other around. It's a mind sport. There's a lot of thinking, precision, finesse.”

'It's way harder than it looks,” said Hollywood's Liza Beres. 'You need strength, flexibility and stamina.”

'Every shot, everybody on the team has a part on it,” added Hollywood's Jen Gamboa.

It would take much more than the rest of this column space to begin to explain the sport. If you've seen it, you get the idea. If you haven't?

Let's just say it was described to me more than once during the tournament as a combination of bowling, chess, golf and shuffleboard on a sheet of ice.

'And sledding if you don't have good balance,” joked Anne York of the Cedar Rapids Curling Club.

Wait a second. Golf?

'You read the ice like you read the greens of a golf course,” said Cedar Rapids' Erin Archambeau.

Curling has rolling and calling and sweeping. There are buttons and pebbles. There are hog lines and burned stones. Please, consult an expert for rules and terminology.

More importantly, said Archambeau, 'It's addicting.”

It must be. There is no great cash prize to be gained at this event, but there certainly were financial sacrifices made by the teams who came from considerable distances to compete here from all over the nation.

This melting pot on ice is in a city where curling didn't exist until recently. Lon Peper started getting involved in the sport in South Carolina, of all places. A job-change brought him to Cedar Rapids in 2012, and he started the club here from scratch.

Last year, Peper got the support of the Ice Arena and the Cedar Rapids Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Cedar Rapids had the winning bid (over Dallas and a Boston suburb) last year for this year's national tourney.

'It gives us more exposure and helps grow our club,” Peper said.

'It's a wonderful sport,” said Martha Maples, who is the skip (captain) of the Cedar Rapids women's team. 'It's a sport families and couples can do. People have to come out and try it.”

In the meantime, we have a national championship in our midst. On ice. In Iowa. In July. What's not to like?