U.S. Olympic curler Mike Schneeberger of Superior, Wis., delivers the stone in a game against Canada. The sport is quickly gaining converts.
		USA TODAY

And as first-year player Lisa Dahline of St. Paul says, "It's much better to play than to watch."

But the ancient sport of curling, in which you slide a 42-pound granite stone down the ice while teammates sweep furiously to help it glide along, is gaining converts faster than the men here at the St. Paul Curling Club can down their brews.

So quirky it's suddenly cool, curling is the hottest thing on ice these days. So hot that the West Metro Curling Club is being formed on the edge of the Twin Cities, because the venerable wood-paneled St. Paul Curling Club, founded almost 100 years ago, can't house everyone. The club's membership has topped out near 1,000.

"It's all indicative of the growth of curling nationwide since the 2002 Olympics," says Rick Patzke of the United States Curling Association in Stevens Point, Wis. (Half of the USA's 16,000 curlers live in Wisconsin or Minnesota, although even Florida boasts a club.)

Though curling hasn't reached the status here that it has long enjoyed in Canada — where 1.2 million curl every winter — it's on the rise, especially in the northern climes. It's long been the sport of choice in smaller towns of the upper Midwest, where winter entertainment is hard to come by.

Membership in USA Curling (usacurl .org) increased 10% last season, and the association recently added 11 clubs from Arizona to Tennessee. Several more are pending. There are 135 curling clubs nationwide.

Widely exposed at the Winter Olympics in 2002 after making its debut in Nagano in 1998, curling has caught on. NBC's Ice 2003 program, which included curling's Continental Cup tournament, drew about 7 million viewers. The figure, posted the same day as Saddam Hussein's capture and a full slate of NFL games, was higher than many NHL telecasts that weekend.

Those who have swept curling's "sheets of ice" (the competition lanes) for decades are a bit bemused. Long ago, they figured out that curling was the best of all sports.

"What you find out is that about the third year you start understanding how complicated the game really is," says Jim "Dex" Dexter, the affable manager of the St. Paul club. "To get good at it is a 10- to 15-year deal. It's all about strategy, the reading of the ice."

It's not just any ice. Curling ice is described as feeling like orange peels. The stone rides the pebbles. The sweeping slightly melts the ice, reducing friction, which lets the stone curl less and slide farther.

The goal of the game in a nutshell: to glide the stone into the scoring area, which looks like a bull's-eye. For each stone closest to the center, one point is scored.

The eight "sheets of ice" at the St. Paul club were full on a recent Friday — it's the height of the curling season, which runs the winter months. Leagues play two-hour rounds before heading upstairs for dinner and drinks.

The scene is reminiscent of a bowling alley on a league night, people peering down through second-floor windows to the action below. Although one North Dakota curler told Sports Illustrated last month that the sport was "a cross between shuffleboard, bowling and New Year's Eve," don't say that to curling aficionados.

"Don't say the b-word in a curling club," Dexter says. "There's a lot more skill to being a good league curler than a bowler. A lot more thinking is involved."

It's also a game in which women are equal to men. Men might have more upper-body strength, but women often sweep better. The other good thing is you can curl way into old age.

Curling, which began in Scotland in the 16th century, is all about camaraderie.

"It's the only sport where you sit down with the opposing team afterward and socialize," says veteran curler Jim Bata, a business analyst for Northwest Airlines.

"If you want to have a good time and play a game, this is it," Dexter says. "The social part is very, very much a part of it."

Curlers concede that the social part, the drinking, was almost all of the sport in the early years. But the game has become more co-ed, more family-oriented, more of a game of skill and less of an excuse to just drink yourself silly on a cold Minnesota night.

Curlers, more than anything else these days, have the reputation of being nice people. Your neighbor. Your plumber. Your bank president.

Nancee Melby's cheeks were rosy from the 42 degrees at which the competition arena is kept at the St. Paul club. (The ice surface is 24.5 degrees.)

"I knew some people who curled, and they were all nice," says the first-year curler and computer programmer from Egan, Minn. "You can be competitive in this sport and still be nice."

Not that the game can't prove frustrating. "It's no secret that Scotland gave us golf, curling and Scotch," she says.

There are dozens of variables, from the delivery to the ice to just plain luck. Like chess, which it is often compared to, curling is a thinking man's game.

What helps is the old curling rule that the winner has to pay for the first round of drinks.

Mark Lusche, 57, a truck driver from Becker, Minn., has been curling for 20 years. "I like to win. But it's the camaraderie thing that brought me in."

He also likes the idea that you get to play with everyone.

"You can go to a weekend tournament and be with world-caliber players," he says. "It's not like you can go to a tennis court and have a pickup game with Serena Williams."

Lusche even lured his wife, Jean, into curling, signing her up without even asking. She wasn't amused at first. "I said, 'Curling? That's not me.' "

Now she's hooked. "You walk into a curling club, and you're part of the gang immediately."

Allison Pottinger, a member of Team USA, the reigning world champions, curls at St. Paul, right along with Jean and Mark Lusche. She practices there most every evening, often as late as 11.

"We're world champions, but even then there's always something new to learn in curling. It's a great combination of individual skills and teamwork," says Pottinger, 30, who has been curling since elementary school. "There's just so much touch and feel to it."

Pottinger will be heading north to Grand Forks, N.D., for the USA Curling National Championships on Feb. 28. If she wins there, it's on to defending her world title in Sweden in April.

Not that it's only those in the northern climes who have all the fun.

The Florida Curling Club in Ellenton held its first bonspiel (a curling tournament) last March. It already has more than 50 members.

"We're trying to get past the novelty aspect of it down here," says Erik Lebsack, 30, an options trader who heads up the club near Sarasota. "The problem here is there's more to do than just curl. Back in St. Paul, it's your life. Here, you can golf."

But Lebsack says a team from Scotland came to play in the first bonspiel last year, and the members want to come back. "People think it's fun to curl in shorts."

St. Paul's Jim Bata isn't wearing shorts this night. He's opting for his traditional long black trousers, extending his right leg back as he glides and releases the stone. He has one of the most elegant deliveries at the club and looks almost as if he's doing ballet. His glide is helped by the Teflon slipper that a curler wears on the left foot.

"A lot of people don't think it's a sport, but it's extremely strenuous. It's like a chess game on ice," says Bata, 44, of suburban Woodbury, who has been playing since he was 11.

Strenuous? Curlers say it raises the heart rate at a fast clip when you sweep.

"It's a lot more cardiovascular than you think it is," Dexter says. In a typical game, a curler walks almost 2 miles.

It also helps to build relationships.

"There aren't (a lot of ) things a husband and wife can do together," says Denise Nelson, a real estate agent from White Bear Lake who curls with her husband, Bob. "To be honest, in the beginning, the scoring doesn't even make sense. But then it all kind of clicks."

It did for Tim Walior and Barb Anderson, both 39, of nearby Stillwater.

Anderson, who works for American Express, has been curling for 10 years. Walior, a computer technician, knew the game only from the Olympics.

When they first met, "I was surprised he even knew what it was," she says.

But he did. And now he plays. And now they're engaged.