HELENA — Playing a sport you’ve never participated in, of course, comes with many challenges. The Last Chance Curling Club understands that and is offering free lessons for the community to learn the sport of curling.
Curling is moving its way into the Helena community. About 60 community members gathered at the Memorial Park Ice Rink to grab a stone, and well, do what anybody does when learning a new sport, make mistakes.
"I've always wanted to do curling. It's just something that seems like a lot of fun and it didn't look too hard," says Peggy Stringer, a 70-year-old Helena resident and participant in the club’s first of their “Learn to Curl” sessions.
These sessions consist of demonstrations with certified curling instructors. Each session consists of about 20 people, on average, the club can train about 60 participants in one day.
After an hour of learning how to curl, many participants said the sport isn’t what they seemed when they arrived at the Memorial Park Ice Rink.
"It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be," says Chloe Roberts, a 16-year-old participant. She joined in on the sessions with her family.
“It's a lot harder to do than it looks," says Joe Roberts, Chloe’s father.
"More active than I first thought," says Jennifer Brunsdon, another participant in the session.
The Last Chance Curling Club recently offered demonstrations as part of its “Learn to Curl” series to give community members a free chance to learn the sport. "We just want to get curling out to people and hopefully get them excited about it," says Todd Myse, the club treasurer.
After the session finished, many say the sport of curling sure is a sport to be excited about in the community.
"It was fun. It was just absolutely fun," says Stringer.
"It's really cool. It was a new experience and it was really fun. It was not anything like what I thought it was going to be, but I guess I didn't really know what it was going to be like," laughs Peggy Roberts.
“It was a blast. It was really wonderful," says Brunsdon.
The next “Learn to Curl” session is scheduled to take place February 7th, 2021. Click here to register for a session.
For more information on the club, click here to visit their Facebook page.
