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Didsbury curlers stick to win
Carson Schultz and Garry Sherman crowned stick curling provincial champions
The founder of stick curling was crowned the first double winner of the provincial championship in a February 5 showdown at the St. Albert Curling Club.
Carson Schultz beat out former champion Don Hafso 4-2 in the ninth annual showcase of two-person stick curling.
“It’s the first repeat and it’s not easy to do,” said Schultz, the inaugural 2004 winner with Brian Dingman.
The Didsbury duo of Schultz and Garry Sherman finished the 32-team draw undefeated to capture the provincial title.
“We’ve been chasing this thing for eight years now and we finally got it,” said Schultz, 65.
“We’ve been in the final before so it’s really nice to finally make it,” added Sherman, 67.
Sport for life
Stick curling consists of two players, male or female of any age, per team. They can either stick deliver or slide deliver. Each team takes turns throwing six rocks per end. The two skips that end become the throwers for the next end. There is also no sweeping between the hog lines.
“It’s great to show people that anybody can get out there and enjoy the sport,” Schultz said
A sore knee forced Schultz to try stick curling in 1998 and he was soon hooked.
“It’s so much easier to do,” he said.
It also helped Dingman, his buddy from Didsbury, to stay active in the sport.
“He had a medical condition and ended up in a wheelchair and couldn’t curl anymore, but he finally got mobile enough to use a cane. He just loved to curl, but with a cane you can’t chase rocks up and down. We said, let’s revamp these rules a little bit so that you can stay at one end and shoot and I will go down to the other end. You shoot them down to me and I will shoot them back,” Schultz said. “All of a sudden the sport exploded.”
Sherman also caught the bug and stick curling quickly became Didsbury’s unofficial sport.
“I came along a couple of years later after Carson started the sport and we’ve been working on it since then,” said Sherman, who curls with Schultz in leagues in Carstairs, Airdrie and Innisfail.
“It really is a sport for everybody.”
Hafso, the 2009 provincial champion with Viking rinkmate Doug Dobry, started stick curling seven years ago.
“I used to curl competitively but I quit for a year because my knee went on me and I can’t slide anymore. A guy talked me into trying a stick and I just enjoyed doing it. It kept me going in the sport, which I love,” Hafso said. “Drawing is a little tougher but you’ll find you can almost hit as well with a stick as you could throwing normally.”
For more information on stick curling, visit www.sturling.net.
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