Are Your Kids Asking to Try an Olympic Sport?
- Category: Motherhood & Pediatrics
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The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, are well upon us. If you’re like many Utahns, you and your family have been captivated by the skill and daring of some of the world’s most talented athletes. Maybe your kids have even asked to try some of the sports they’ve been watching.
Perhaps you’re not eager to send them careening down the luge track or to pay the high prices to go skiing. If that’s the case, how about curling?
Arguably the safest Winter Olympic Sport, Curling is a game in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice towards a circular target area. A curler can induce a curved path by causing the stone to slowly turn as it slides. The path of the rock may be further influenced by two sweepers with brooms who accompany it as it slides down the sheet, using brooms to alter the state of the ice in front of the stone. Sweeping a rock makes it curl less, and decreases the friction that slows the rock down.
Curling began in 16th-century Scotland as a game in which players slid flat-bottomed river stones across frozen ponds toward circular target areas. Curling has grown in worldwide popularity over the centuries and was added as an official sport in the 1998 Winter Olympics.
If you and/or your family would like to try curling, consider the following opportunities: