Winter Olympics stoke curling devotion – and big donations – in Bend

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Michael Coe, an otherwise mild-mannered man who works as a therapist, was anything but soft-spoken as he flung instructions across the ice to his curling teammates.

“Hard! Hard! Hard, you guys! Come on! Never off. Come on, all the way!”

Coe’s shouts began as soon as one of his teammates lunged a 41-pound stone into motion.

Two people, each outfitted with a rubber gripper under one foot and a slider on the other, hoisted their curling brooms. Gliding alongside the careening rock they furiously brushed at the ice just ahead of it.

With short vigorous motions, these “sweepers” try to control the stone’s path and speed as it slides towards a target on the other end of the rink.

Coe and his teammates are part of the Bend Curling Club. On a recent Friday morning, they were playing a league game on the public ice rink in Bend.

Before adding this morning slot to the schedule, local curlers could only use the ice on Saturday evenings. But with the niche sport quickly gaining popularity in Central Oregon, club leaders are pursuing an even bigger vision for expansion — opening a dedicated curling facility.

The U.S. women’s curling team made Olympic history Feb. 13 when they defeated the top-ranked Canadian team. As the countries square off again in a bronze-medal match Saturday, U.S. women curlers are in contention for a medal for the first time.

Bend curling enthusiasts are parlaying some of the international spotlight into fundraising for what could become one of Oregon’s only facilities just for curling.

“This has been the one year that I felt like we don’t dwell in obscurity anymore,” Coe said. “I think that for once, people are finally like, ‘Oh wow, this is actually a thing.’”

The league launched its donation campaign last month. Coe estimates it’ll cost between $1.2 million and $1.5 million to lease an existing building and develop it into a curler’s dream, complete with multiple lanes and a bar where people can watch the games and hang out together.

It’s a lot to raise for a niche sport, but the club is already more than halfway there.

A $500,000 donation pledge from Carol Giles and Ron Sproat of Prineville came in this week, bringing the total pledged to $713,000.

Giles said the couple set the money aside after a profitable business sale, intending to give to multiple charities, but they decided to go all in on curling after seeing how quickly other club members’ pledges rolled in.

“It’s a finesse sport. My husband’s 81, I’m almost 70, and we’re still playing very competitively and not many sports allow you, as you grow older, to continue to play,” Giles said.

“We just really want to open up the whole sport to the community. We think it’ll be a great draw to Central Oregon from tourism.”

Dozens of club members came out to a brewery in Bend this week to watch a rebroadcast of the U.S. women’s curling team as they took on Switzerland.

Mike and Mickey Freundelich stood out among the crowd in their festive Olympic berets. They helped start the Bend Curling Club in 2016.

The couple, now in their 80s, has since retired from the sport, but they played for much of their lives in Bend and before that in their home state of Massachusetts. That’s where Mickey remembers the glory of an elusive perfect-score game, known as an “eight-ender.”

“Mickey is in the curling hall of fame,” her husband Mike said, though OPB couldn’t immediately corroborate the claim.

“It’s like having, in golf, eight holes in one,” Mickey said with a smile.

Coe said having members like the Freundelichs come out to club events is meaningful for the diverse community that’s sprung up around a quirky sport. He sees it as another example of how inclusive curling is.

In Bend, the club’s learn-to-curl classes fill up fast, while there’s a long waitlist of curlers from all age groups hoping to get time on the ice at Bend Park and Recreation’s ice rink, The Pavilion, where skaters and hockey players also practice. High demand for the rink means people who fall in love with curling often can’t find a team, or ice, to keep playing, Coe said.

Tom Pietrowski helped start the Bend Curling Club a decade ago and is the current vice-chair. He’s rooting for a dedicated facility to come together to so that generations of Central Oregonians can curl.

“A lot of the old guard is kind of phasing out,” Pietrowski said. “I am excited about the thought of, if we do this, people will be curling 50 years from now in Bend because we stuck our necks out now.”

The only current facility dedicated to curling in Oregon is in Beaverton.