To the uninitiated — as in, most of us — it looks a lot like shuffleboard on ice, but with the odd added bonus of people frantically sweeping brooms to smooth the way for each shot.
To those who actually spend time curling, it’s a lot more like chess on ice, a centuries-old sport that’s accessible but also requires a keen mix of athleticism, strategy and a lot of time and practice to master. Curling’s back in the international spotlight again thanks to the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy. Team USA’s best curlers were right in the medal mix: They took home a silver medal in the mixed doubles event, while the women’s team just missed out on winning a bronze. The men’s team finished fifth overall.
Across UW-Madison, curling is a serious thing. Bucky is a two-time defending national champ in college curling and there are curlers in departments, classrooms and the alumni ranks. Here in the College of Letters & Science, there are a startling number of amateur curlers honing their skills. It starts at the very top with Eric Wilcots, Dean of the College of Letters & Science and Mary C. Jacoby Professor of Astronomy. Wilcots has been a member of the Madison Curling Club in McFarland for many years now, since that fateful day in 2018 when he watched an Olympic curling match with Steve Ackerman, the then-associate vice chancellor of UW–Madison’s Graduate School. He also credits Miranda Hofmann, department administrator in French & Italian and member of the Poynette and Lodi Curling Clubs, for helping with his delivery.
“It’s a great thing to do in the winter, and the game itself is a lot of fun and incredibly social,” says Wilcots of curling’s appeal. “And it’s one of those things where, once you get started, it’s like, ‘Man, I’ve got to figure out how to get better at this.’”
Curling matches find teams of four players throwing 40-pound granite stones down a sheet of ice, hoping to land the stone as close as possible to the center of a target scoring circle (known as “the house”) or knock out their opponent’s stones. While one teammate holds up a special curling broom as a target (kind of like the pin on the green in golf), the other two sweep in front of the stone as it slides, impacting its momentum and curl/trajectory.
Wilcots, when he plays vice-skip, helps sweep the first four rocks and throws third in the rotation. He says the number of variables involved in a match (and even within a single throw) is one of the things that makes the game a blast to play.
“Over a given game, the ice conditions will change,” he says. “The first time you throw your rocks, the ice is probably a little cold or frosty, so it’s running a little slow. As the game goes on, it’ll speed up in some lanes depending upon how well they’re used.”
In one match, Wilcots nailed what’s known as a hit-and-roll — a throw that knocks an opponent’s stone out of the house while bouncing your own stone into prime scoring position — and a player on a nearby team gave him props.
“Great shot,” the bystander said. “You should be skip.”
This fellow curler was referring to a curling team’s captain, the one who makes the crucial final throws. The player? None other than Matt Hamilton, the famed McFarland curler who was part of Team USA’s gold medal-winning curling squad in the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics.
“It doesn’t get better than that,” says Wilcots.
Wilcots is hardly the only one in the L&S universe to be captivated by curling. In early 2025, members of the College’s Teaching, Learning, and Academic Planning (TLA) team got together for a curling social to learn the game. Three of them — Associate Dean for TLA Shirin Malekpour, Academic Data Analyst Kate Golen and Instructional Program Manager Rob Schultz — ended up forming their own team for 2026 at the curling club in Arlington, Wisconsin.
“For two hours I get to hang out with cool people, try to throw a rock as accurately as I can, sweep per instructions and not fall on my behind,” jokes Malekpour. “What is there not to like?”
Schultz has been curling most of his life — he even earned a letter in high school for the sport — and he’s enjoyed watching curling’s popularity climb, since it was officially ensconced as a medal sport at the Olympics in 1998.
“Curling is a lifelong sport,” says Schultz. “I play against opponents ranging from 10 to 80, and neither age nor strength predict shot-making ability. You can play curling no matter what!”
Meg Hamel, the academic communications manager for L&S Student Academic Affairs, appreciates the payoffs that come with mastering curling’s learning curve. She joined the Madison Curling Club back in 2021.
“It’s the most amazing feeling to become a stronger teammate,” she says. “You make tougher shots. You sweep more effectively. You read the ice and learn which rock curls in a weird way. Your strategy becomes more complex, thinking ahead and setting up more options for the win.”
Keith Levin, an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics, picked up curling in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland. At first, it seemed to him like a silly and fun way to get some winter exercise. He quickly discovered how addictive it was — and how challenging.
“It requires a surprising amount of athleticism,” he says. “When you watch people curling, it’s tempting to think something along the lines of ‘Oh, I could do that.’ It’s among the most accessible of the Olympic sports, but you spend a lot of time falling on the ice when you’re first learning to deliver a stone.”
More than almost anything else, the curlers appreciate their sport’s strong social aspects. Opposing teams routinely meet up after matches for some “broom stacking,” the curling colloquial term for snacks, drinks and conversation. And as Wilcots points out, curling might be one of the world’s most democratic sports.
“All those Olympic curlers we’re watching on TV now are in a club somewhere, and so after the Olympics, they’re going to go back to their club, and their club is full of regular people like you and me,” says Wilcots. “They’re going back to just being part of the community, where you and I can curl with and against them. I’ve had the privilege of curling with Steve Emt, who is representing the USA in the Paralympic Games. Not many of us who ski are going to go and challenge Mikaela Shiffrin to a slalom run.”
The Perfect Throw
Steve Ackerman didn’t just recruit Eric Wilcots to the world of curling. He also lured Tristan L’Ecuyer, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, onto the ice back in 2016. L’Ecuyer loves to deep-dive into curling’s strategic elements. For instance, he notes that a strong sweeper can add 8-10 feet of extra distance to a throw or affect how much it curls by as much as two feet. Sometimes that can make all the difference in a match.
Like Wilcots, L’Ecuyer prefers to play as vice-skip. He’s still learning the strategy for nailing the perfect throw, but one thing is certain — it all comes down to teamwork.
“It starts with the skip putting their broom in the right place on the ice,” he says. “The person throwing needs good posture and balance to slide out toward the broom. They need to release the stone cleanly with good rotation so that it runs and curls properly. The two sweepers immediately need to judge how fast the stone is going based on a combination of feel and timing, call out the ‘weight,’ and call out where they think it will end up. With that information and based on how little or much the rock is curling, the skip will call one or both sweepers to sweep the rock while they continue to communicate how far they think it is going. To sum that up in a word, the secret to making the perfect shot is probably communication.”