Stones and brooms return to Long Beach

Americans viewers got their fill of the game watching the Olympics. Now, after almost a year-hiatus, curling — otherwise known as “chess on ice” — will return to the Long Beach Ice Arena.

That’s good news for Michael Greene from Bellerose and some fellow curlers from Long Island, who no longer need to trek up the New York State Thruway to Ardsley, a Westchester town 10 minutes west of Scarsdale, to play their favorite game.

“Some of us always wanted to have a curling club here,” said Greene, who in the winter of 2008 brought the idea to the arena, then operated by Bernie Shereck. “They didn’t have it, but they wanted it.”

Soon after, Greene and the Long Island Curling Club began holding regular games on the weekends at the arena. Greene said the club was forced to take a hiatus this winter when it was unable to schedule ice time after the City of Long Beach took over operations.

The sport drew millions of spectators in the stands and in living rooms during last month’s Olympics in Vancouver. Playing their nation’s most popular sport after hockey, the Canadian men’s team took the gold from Norway in front of a packed house of more than 5,000. NBC reported that curling was most searched Olympic event on Google and was given 300 hours of television coverage by the network’s sister station MSNBC.

Riding this wave of popularity, Greene and his fellow curlers are coming back to the ice arena on March 20 for an open clinic.

A lover of competition and strategy games, Long Beach resident Julie Halfon calls curling “a board game on ice.” She got interested in the game after watching the 2006 Winter Olympics held in Turin, Italy.

She then came across a press release on the city’s Web site announcing the games and decided to give it a try. “It was more fun than I thought it would be,” she added. “There’s a lot of strategy to it and that’s why it’s fun.”

Curling involves two teams of four players who take turns throwing a stone, a 44-pound hunk of granite, into a circled area, called a house, which is approximately 113 from the start line. One player throws the stone, while two players use brooms to polish the ice in front of it, which allows the stone to glide about an additional 15 feet. Each round, called an end, is comprised of 16 stones and each game has 10 ends and lasts about 72 minutes.

Like Halfon, curiosity also lead Gary Fortgang of Long Beach to attend an open house that the club held at the ice arena. “I was just somewhat intrigued by it,” said Fortgang, a lifetime athlete. Growing up, Fortgang played everything from baseball to football and now runs marathons.

Asked how it compares to more traditional sports he said, “You have to be more controlled and plan out what you’re going to do. It’s a little bit like a chess game.”

The appeal, said Fortgang, is that men and women of all shapes, sizes and athletic abilities can play the game equally. “It doesn’t eliminate half the population,” he said.

This is what appealed to Long Beach resident Mark Topaz who admitted he isn’t the biggest or most athletic person. “It’s a sport that you can play and everyone is on equal footing,” said Topaz, who was introduced to curling while working for NBC as a graphics operator during the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. “It’s just a matter of your ability to throw the stone in an accurate fashion.”

“It’s strategy in that you’re setting up not the immediate shot, but three or four shots later,” Topaz. said.

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