Andrew McBride and his wife have always been avid winter sport jocks, but when they saw curling in the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, they were hooked.

Curling, often referred to by players as “chess on ice” is a team sport played in the winter Olympics where two teams slide 40-pound granite stones across an ice rink trying to hit a target. 

“My wife and I said we have to try this,” said McBride, the University’s architect.

But the closest curling club to Richmond was on the eastern shore of Maryland. So, they made the day trip, driving three hours one way to try it for themselves. 

“We just had a real blast,” he said, “and we decided to start our own curling club here in Richmond.”

The members of the teams of four take turns delivering stones and sweeping. The skip, or team captain, guides the team. The goal of the game is to get stones as close as possible to, or touching the target, called the “house,” without missing it. And those sweepers? McBride explains the curling broom, or brush is the key to getting the stone where the team needs it to go.

“It changes the texture of the ice in front of the stone so it can slide more easily and go farther,” said McBride, who has worked on every campus building since 1994.

Unfortunately, the Richmond area doesn’t get enough snow to create a natural rink, and most of the local rinks are booked with hockey season through the winter, so McBride and his team ramped up their practices in the spring and summer.

“I was keeping the stones in the back of my car, and in the summer, with that heat, when I set it on the ice, it just hissed,” he said. “We had a huge learning experience that first year.”

The ice also has to be a specific texture for curling, so it took a lot of getting used to for the team. But since then, he and about a dozen of his friends have met for tournaments during the spring and summer. They’ve been playing together for more than 10 years.

Curling has been a part of the Olympics since the inaugural games in 1924, but was deemed a “demonstration sport” from 1932 until 1998 when it was reintroduced for competition.

McBride’s favorite part about the sport is that it’s accessible.

“You can play when you’re 3. You can play when you’re 80. You can play in a wheelchair,” he said. “It's diversified, and it’s a lot of fun.”