Curling runs in the family at Olympic trials

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – Craig Brown despised curling growing up — too tedious for his taste.

His older sister, Erika, though, was a curling connoisseur, traveling all around the world, making an assortment of international friends through the sport.

He watched his sister's exploits with increasing awe, began to envy her burgeoning resume, and soon had a change of heart.

Family lured him into curling.

It's hardly a surprise.

There's a close kinship that exists among curlers as flocks of families take to the ice to roll the rock.

That's quite evident at this year's U.S. Olympic trials, where there are six sets of brothers in the competition, along with two sets of sisters, two clusters of cousins and three groups of siblings, including the Browns.

There also are two husbands on teams who have wives in the field, not to mention a mother and daughter tandem.

Family ties definitely run deep.

"Curling is very much something where your dad or mom takes you down to the club, and you play with them," said Allison Pottinger of Team McCormick, whose husband, Doug, competes for Team Romaniuk. "It's just one of those things — you don't plan on it but the sport sort of sticks."

Steve Brown never pushed his two kids, Craig and Erika, into curling.

He bribed them.

"Told them we'd stop at McDonald's on the way home from the curling club," the father said, laughing. "I just tried to make it fun, even if it meant playing with chairs and building forts when we were at the curling club."

Erika Brown was a natural, earning a spot on the 1988 Olympic team as a 15-year-old when it was a demonstration sport in Calgary. She garnered another spot on the Olympic squad in 1998, the team finishing fifth in Nagano.

Now, she's back again at the trials hoping to secure another spot, with her father serving as coach.

"Curling is what we talk about at the dinner table," said Erika Brown, whose husband, Ian Tetley, is a three-time world champion from Canada. "It's great. You have the opportunity to play a team sport with people who you develop really close relationships with, and have an opportunity to travel all over the world. That's what drew me."

Watching his sister travel all over was what finally thawed Craig Brown on curling. Until then, he was a soccer and baseball enthusiast.

Such is life for a curling family.







Children play on top of rocky desert cliffs at sunset. AP Photo/Hasan Jamali