Orangeville Curling Club hosts stick curling championship

February 13, 2025 · 0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

For some curlers, bending down on your knees to throw a rock may present a problem.

Someone with bad knees or hips, or some other disability may find tossing a rock on the ice sheet to be a real problem. The solution is stick curling.

In this type of curling, the player can launch the rock with a long stick that has a special fitting that allows it to work around the handle of a rock so a person can throw while still standing.

All the same curling rules apply when you’re on the ice sheet but using a stick.

The Orangeville Curling Club hosted the Stick Curling Championship on Saturday, Feb. 1, with the finals on Sunday, Feb. 2.

“This is the Ontario Provincial Stick Curling Championship,” explained the Orangeville Curling Club’s head ice technician. “It’s open to people who use a stick delivery rather than a traditional slide delivery. For one reason or another, they are unable to do a slide delivery. We have one competitor who is wheelchair bound and she’s able to play in this tournament because she delivers with a stick. There’s one provincial championship for this every year. It’s an open qualify so you don’t need to win a tournament to qualify to be here. The stick delivery started being developed around 20 years ago.”

The event was sanctioned by Curling Ontario.

Bona Lea Allard represented Curling Ontario at the event and was the head umpire at the Orangeville championship.

“I enter all the scores, and if they have issues on the ice and they need an official ruling they will call me out to do that,” Allard explained. “There are 11 teams here today. This is a provincial event called the Four Person Stick. You have to use a stick, that’s a key part of the tournament. The rule of play is the same. Our rules for Curling Ontario are governed by Curling Canada, and they are governed by World Curling. The rule book is the same. This is round-robin play. The winners today will go to the semi-finals tomorrow (Sunday) and championship game.”

Curling is a very competitive but ‘gentlemanly’ sport.

At the start of each match, players wish opponents good luck, and at the end, it is customary to say “thanks for the game.”