The sport of curling — somewhat akin to shuffleboard on ice — is growing in popularity, spurred by the recent Winter Olympics in Beijing, even though the U.S. teams missed out on winning medals.

After watching the 2010 Olympics, Bryan Spang of Hempfield caught the curling bug. He started learning the intricacies and strategies of sliding a 42-pound stone down 100 feet of ice and has kept at it since 2015.

Spang, Hempfield Area School District’s longtime golf coach and longtime athlete, said the chance to compete attracted him to the sport.

“It’s the competitive edge,” Spang said. “There’s tactics and strategies involved. You’re always thinking three shots ahead.”

For Bryan and his wife, Debbie, the sport is a family affair. They play at the Pittsburgh Curling Club rink in Stowe Township.

Their 23-year-old son, Zackary, now a teacher in the Bald Area School District in Centre County, joins them in the sport. He started in 2014 as a “sweeper” on the four-member team, and has become good at it, Debbie said. To do it well, the sweeper has to put some 60 to 70 pounds of force on the broom in front of the stone.

“I like it because I can be on a team with my family,” said Debbie Spang, a Norwin High School teacher. The fourth member of their team is a 2011 Norwin grad, Cody O’Connell.

“We’ve seen it (curling) grow, especially in the year (2018) when the U.S. won gold in the Olympics,” said Dustin Devine, president of the Pittsburgh Curling Club, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. After that Olympics, they had about 1,000 people try the sport, Devine said.

The club now has about 120 members, up from about 90 members in 2018, Devine said.

“We’re slowly moving to recapture the momentum we had” before covid hit, he noted.

With the sport getting the attention from Olympics, business also is “going really well” at Sliders Ice Curling in Millvale, said Jack Welsh, who owns the business with two partners. The club calls it the nation’s only bar with a curling rink.

Welsh said he and his partners got into the sport playing at the Robert Morris University Island Sports Center on Neville Island and became hooked.

“It looks easy, then you do it, and it’s a little harder than it looks,” Welsh said.

Another curler inspired by the Olympics is John Zavinski of Hermitage, who is a member of the Pittsburgh Curling Club.

Zavinski watched the U.S. curling teams fail miserably in the 2010 Olympics and figured, with all the confidence of an armchair athlete, “I can do better than that.”

But he also found it a little tougher than it looks and more complex, Zavinski said.

Curling involves more than just pushing the stone and turning the handle clockwise or counterclockwise so it spins down the 15-foot-wide sheet of ice. Players attempt to get it to stop in the center of the circular “house.” That “button” in the middle of the house is the bull’s-eye where players want the stone to stop.

A captain at the other end of the ice uses a broom handle to show the spinner where he wants the stone to stop. In some cases, the spinner needs to make the stone curl around an opponent’s stone to reach as close to the button as possible. At the same time the stone is moving down the ice, the two sweepers are using brooms to melt a thin layer of ice in front of the stone or let it go down the ice.

For those who want to give it a try, Sliders Ice Curling in Millvale and the Pittsburgh Curling Club offer opportunities to start in the sport. Sliders’ rink is under a tent with chillers to keep the ice cold from November through April. The surface is shorter than a regular rink and sweepers are not used, Welsh said.

Those who are interested in watching a curling tournament can go to the Pittsburgh Curling Club for its bonspiel tournament that starts Thursday and continues through Sunday. The tournament, for those who have been playing for no more than five years, has attracted 23 clubs and 40 teams from 13 states, Devine said.

“Everybody sees it and thinks they can do it. Then they try it and get hooked,” Devine said.

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