The first time I saw two person curling, I saw a brilliant idea. It wasn’t the mixed doubles event at the Olympics, it was the Iron Man Bonspiel held at the Yorkton Curling Club. That format has different rules, with no sweeping being the most eyebrow raising, but what I saw was a way to build a curling club.
Let’s consider a hypothetical situation. You and your partner are new to town and you don’t really know anyone - after all, you just moved here. You want an activity to do together and you like curling, but since you don’t really know anyone, it’s not exactly easy to make a full rink - there are, after all only two of you. What do you do?
If you have doubles curling, however, you’ve got an in. You don’t need to make a team, you don’t need to find other players, you don’t need to be paired up with someone you don’t necessarily know if you’re going to like.
League play will lead you to meet other players. Since all the other players are also doubles teams, they might want to start a full curling team next season. Maybe there are a couple competitors you really get along with, they become good friends and you like playing against them. You wouldn’t have met them unless you were doing the mixed doubles curling event, but you could make a team with them. It’d be great.
Even if you don’t, you still have a good curling league to join. You have all the benefits of being a member of the local curling club. You can play doubles curling all you want, and if you like that format best, you’ve got a great chance to play with people.
In essence, doubles curling lowers the bar for entry for curling clubs, especially when it comes to recruiting new members and people who are new to the city.
I’ve seen a few people deride the new format as silly, including some who sit at desks near mine. But that’s short-sighted, looking only at sports that have always existed rather than how sports can evolve. It wasn’t long ago where nobody took snowboarding seriously, and that’s becoming a marquee event.
Lots of curling clubs are struggling to get members, and I understand why. For a lot of people, recruiting an entire team can feel like a hassle. You might not want to be on a team with someone you don’t know, or just don’t know how to go about getting involved.
Doubles curling is inherently welcoming. Two people is a low barrier for entry. For curling clubs, getting more people on the ice is what they need. Whether teams evolve into more teams for other leagues, who knows, but it’s a door into the club, a way to meet other members in friendly competition. If you love curling, you’ll want to stick with it, and that’s what a club wants. It’s going to foster a greater sense of community and build relationships between people. It’s also just a fun thing to do.
Curling clubs don’t need people being fussy and only playing how it’s always been played. They need people taking to the ice and trying the sport for the first time. If doubles curling encourages that, it might be the best thing to happen to the sport in years.
