WHITESBORO — Call it love at first sweep.

One recent night, I was mesmerized, tantalized and, yes, a tad bruised, by a sport that’s becoming shockingly popular across the country and already has a strong hold on Central New York — curling.

Now don’t laugh.

I was always too thin for football. And apparently, Jim Boeheim thinks he’s got something going with shooting guard DeShaun Williams.

So, with my athletic opportunities waning and my curiosity piqued from watching curling on TV during the Winter Olympics, I trekked an hour east with two friends to give the curl a whirl.

Our destination, the Utica Curling Club, sits about 75 yards back from a desolate road in this town of 4,000. From the outside, the place looks like an oversized aluminum-sided yard shed. But the club’s inside is a veritable curling Mecca with over 150 years of history.

At first, you think, ‘bowling alley,’ what with that homely cigarette-and-beer scent. Then, glancing around at the plush furniture and expansive trophy cases, you wonder, ‘golf club?’ But there, front and center, are those six sheets of gleaming ice.

If this joint is nothing else, it’s cozy.

About 50 middle-aged people in fleece jackets and wind pants mill about the room, some sipping on a cool import. It’s like a potluck dinner, ski-lodge style. ‘This should be a breeze,’ I think.

A woman greets our group with a smile and a stack of waivers. Waivers? For curling?

Laughing, we scrawl our signatures, releasing the club from ‘liability’ for all the ‘risks’ of curling. One curler advises us to ‘get taped up’ and busts out a roll of duct tape. Covering the bottom of your left foot helps you glide on the ice, she tells us.

By now, this has all really become quite comedic. Our group agrees it’s high time to hit the ice.

We receive a quick lesson on the basics of curling: Take the 42-pound ‘stone’ and slide it down the ice toward the center of a target, called the ‘house.’ It’s like bocce. But the catch here is that two sweepers rub brooms in front of the sliding stone to decrease friction and make it go faster and further.

We watch one soccer mom take the stone and, like a soaring bird, slide on her front foot with perfect form and send an arrow-straight shot down the ice.

I smirk, pondering, ‘Is this really a sport?’

Strutting across the ice, I take my stone, try to glide forward and tip onto my side like a tyke on training wheels.

Pure humiliation. Like having your shorts spiked in gym class.

Throughout the night, my buddies took similar spills — one on his head, the other on his rear. But we grimaced through it and eventually began to improve, thanks in part to some pointers from 30-year curler Bill Morehouse.

‘We get some blown knees out here,’ he tells us, explaining that ours might be sore the next day because of the pressure the curling stance puts on the front leg, which you hold in an L-shaped position while sliding the stone.

After I throw a few more stones — all while screaming the hallowed curling command ‘Hard!’ to instruct my buddies to sweep furiously — I’m beat and decide to chat with a few veteran curlers.

I meet Dean Kelly, a lumber company owner, who was an official at the Salt Lake City Games.

‘It was hottest ticket in town,’ he says.

I chat with Paul MacEnroe, a Syracuse alum and four-year curler, who is the club’s membership chairman.

He tells me how curling’s rich history in Utica began on the local ponds and how this 6-year-old, six-sheet facility is the largest in the East. There are about 10,000 curlers in the United States, he says.

But the Olympics did wonders for the sport’s popularity. MacEnroe has answered countless calls, including mine, about the night in Utica, and a similar open house in Philadelphia drew 300 people.

‘It got a lot of play,’ MacEnroe says. ‘Leno was busting balls on it. Letterman was busting balls on it. Jim Lampley was going crazy.’

Canadians have been nuts about curling for a while. Twenty-five percent (1.5 million) of them curl. Curling is on TV. A 30-second ad during Canada’s national championships last week cost $300,000.

‘It’s like diplomatic immunity going over the border,’ says Morehouse. ‘If you’re ever carrying contraband over the border, tell them you’re a curler.’

Curling’s cult following in Utica keeps spreading. The 280-member club grows about 10 percent a year, and there’s talk of starting a college league as the sport is transforming from, in Morehouse’s words, ‘a bunch of old bowlers’ to ‘these young stud athletes, 6-foot-4 and ripped.’

Before I stroll out of the club that night, sore as can be, MacEnroe offers some advice.

‘If you really want to get into the Olympics, seriously, curling is a really quick way to get in,’ he says. ‘Somebody who’s between the ages of 18 and 21 can come in, learn and, within 10 years, be of Olympic caliber.’

My mom always said I needed to learn how to use a broom.

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Published on March 19, 2002 at 12:00 pm