OGDEN -- They came here from Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin -- not to mention local communities like West Valley City, Huntsville, Ogden and Clinton.
They are bankers, salespeople, television producers, medical administrators, retirees and elementary school students.But while they come from diverse places and backgrounds, the 80-plus curlers who turned out to compete in Utah's first-ever "bonspiel" this weekend at the Weber County Ice Sheet in Ogden do have one thing in common:
A love of sliding that 42-pound circular chunk of granite known as "the stone" across large expanses of open ice.
The Ogden Curling Club's first Spring Bonspiel, or curling tournament, will continue through Sunday at The Ice Sheet located northwest of the Dee Events Center at Weber State University.
The Ice Sheet will host curling in the 2002 Winter Games. In competition, two teams attempt to place their stones closest to a target while trying to thwart their opponents who are doing the same thing.
"Curling is the best-kept secret in sports," said 44-year-old Richard Maskel, a free-lance television producer from Green Bay, Wisc., who curled for the 1986 national championship team.
"This is not a joke sport," he said. "Curling is a genuine athletic event that is extremely complex and takes years to understand. I'm still not sure I understand it."
Maskel, who was curling on a team with two other former national champions, must understand something -- he was selected by the U.S. Olympic Committee to write a guidebook on curling for the 2002 Winter Games.
But there wasn't much time to talk. A few seconds later, Maskel's lanky frame was stretched out across the ice as he sent a pair of granite "stones" toward a colorful bulls-eye more properly called "the house."
The bonspiel was on.
Twenty teams have entered the three-day tourney that resumes 8:30 a.m. Saturday and will run to about 6:30 p.m.
The bonspiel will conclude Sunday, running from 9 a.m. to about 2 p.m. when there will be an awards ceremony to honor the winners.
"I curl because of the challenge. It's like chess on ice," said 53-year-old Jim Vukich, who markets mobile home parks for adults and senior citizens in Seattle when he's not on the ice. "I've been all over the world curling, and it's just a great sport."
Vukich is a four-time Washington state curling champion and played on two national championship teams in 1987 and 1989. His wife Sharon, 42, is an eight-time Washington state champion and curled for two national teams herself in 1980 and 1987.
She met Jim through curling competition in the Seattle area, and it was love at first ice.
"Curling is a lifelong sport that the whole family can enjoy, and it's good exercise," Sharon Vukich said. "We have curlers in our club who are in their 80s.
"And there's a brotherhood of curling," she added. "If you go to Switzerland or Scotland or anywhere in the world and tell people you're a curler, there's instant camaraderie."
But 10-year-old Cody Butcher, a fourth-grader from Holt Elementary School, wasn't paying much attention to the social niceties of curling. Cody was much too busy pushing a stone that weighed almost half as much as he does.
Stacked up against his other favorite sports of baseball, soccer and basketball, Cody says curling comes in a strong third.
And he curls for one reason, he added. "Because it's fun."
He wasn't getting any arguments from a team of four professional women from Duluth, Minn., who decided to come to Ogden for a weekend of competition and fun.
"I didn't start curling until I was 43," said Deb Park, a 49-year-old medical center administrator. "But I was always competitive in school . . . and there aren't a lot of competitive sports a mature person can play."
Also on Parks' team were Robin Berarducci-Jensen, a mortgage loan processor; Patty Shogren, a sales representative for Wrigley's Gum, and the "skip" or team captain, Pam Cavers, who usually spends her days counting money in a Minnesota bank vault.
Dale Sandusky, a retired 62-year-old West Valley resident, doesn't have to worry about working, but he still stays busy as an instructor for the Ogden Curling Club and serving on the local 2002 Winter Olympics planning committee for curling.
"Why do I curl? Number one, I'm Scottish and it's a Scottish sport," he said. "I curled as a youth, but there was no curling when I came to Utah in 1972."
But he admits that after a 35-year career teaching woodshop in Tooele, it's nice to kick back and watch a favorite sport finally come into its own in Utah.
Doug Anderson spends most of his time in Stevens Point, Wis., where he works as member services coordinator for the United State Curling Association.
But he wasn't here on business.
"I deal with curling all the time, and here I'm taking vacation to do more curling," Anderson said with a chuckle and shaking his head in mock amazement.
"But I play competitively and recreationally, and I really enjoy both types of game," he added. "This is clearly a recreation bonspiel . . . but the players are still intense."
Off along the sidelines, Lynn Taggart of the Ogden Curling Club was getting lunch ready to go while keeping an eye on her two sons out on the ice.
And what do curlers like to eat? she was asked, while preparing a potato bar with chili for the meal.
"I was told to make it healthy," Taggart added, "and to not forget the chocolate."