It’s fair to say curling is my second-favorite sport behind soccer. It’s also fair to say it’s underappreciated in the United States and that it’s difficult for us to follow. This page aims to change all that. This will help you remember who’s Brad Jacobs and who’s Brad Gushue. It’ll help you see if Nina Roth or Jamie Sinclair will make a John Shuster-style vault into mainstream culture. (No, but read anyway.) It’ll help you follow the season as it progresses. Enjoy. (Abbreviations you really need to know: OOM – Order of Merit, which covers two years. YTD – year-to-date) … Continue reading Curling power rankings (Jan. 1 update)

  John Shuster won Olympic gold. Jamie Sinclair made the World Championship semifinals, won a Grand Slam event and stands ninth in the Order of Merit. Then the seniors earned silver (women) and bronze (men) at the World Championships. USA Curling had a big year. But there’s usually a bit of turnover after the Olympics, and so the teams in the High Performance program, which supports the select few who’ve shown an aptitude for winning things, will be shuffling a bit. The full comparison is at the bottom, but I’ll got into a bit more detail than that press release. … Continue reading The curling shuffle: USA Curling’s High Performance makeover

Yes, it’s already curling season. In fact, we’re less than two months away from the Olympic Trials, set for Nov. 11-18. Curling isn’t the most predictable sport in the world, but the four-team (or five, pending an appeal by Todd Birr) men’s competition has a clear favorite. John Shuster has been the skip in the last two Olympics after taking bronze on Pete Fenson’s team in 2006. His current team — Tyler George, Matt Hamilton and John Landsteiner — has qualified for the World Championships three straight years and done no worse than fifth, making the playoffs each of the last … Continue reading Curling: Huge win for U.S. Olympic hopeful