Hacks, Stones, and the Button
- Jeff Schober
- 9 minutes ago
- 12 min read
The Buffalo Curling Club hopes membership grows
amid a wave of interest around the Winter Olympics
One of Danielle Buchbinder’s earliest memories is watching a 12-inch black-and-white TV in her family’s living room on the East Side of Buffalo. There were only five channels, and two of them broadcast from Canada. It was from a Canadian station that she first noticed curling.
“I’ve wanted to curl since I was three years old,” Buchbinder recalled. “When I saw it on TV, I asked my mom about it. She told me it was a Canadian sport. I later learned there was a Buffalo Curling Club in Amherst, but we didn’t have much money. Even if my mom had known about it, we wouldn’t have been able to afford it there.”
Yet her dream of curling never died. In 2002, when Buchbinder was a young professional, her boss watched curling in the Olympics and thought it might be a novel team-building activity. He charged Buchbinder with organizing a time and place where everyone from work could try the sport.
By then, the former Buffalo Curling Club, adjacent to the Park Country Club on Sheridan Drive, had closed. There were no indoor curling sheets in Western New York, so Buchbinder ended up across the border at the Niagara Falls (Ontario) Curling Club. After just a few outings, she acknowledged that her childhood dream still held sway. She was hooked.
“Curling is mesmerizing,” she said. “It’s one of the most peaceful things I’ve done in my life. I was alone on the ice doing warmup slides, sliding from one hack to the other. There was a cool breeze going through my hair. The roar of the rock in front of me. It’s all very soothing.”
Yet the game has moments of controlled chaos and noise — like when a Skip, who calls shots and directs teammates to sweep, yells instructions.
“Screaming at other people and telling them what to do — that can be fun too,” she laughed.
Buchbinder is a founding member of the current Buffalo Curling Club, housed in the old Buffalo China factory near the convergence of Seneca Street, Bailey Avenue, and the 190 expressway. With approximately 320 members, the club regularly hosts leagues, tournaments (called bonspiels), pickup games, lessons, and opportunities for kids, veterans, and people with special needs. The sport is seasonal. An ice sheet is prepared and frozen in the fall. Play begins in October, then the ice is melted at the end of April.
Since curling became an Olympic event in 1998, interest in the sport tends to spike every four years. This year, the Buffalo Curling Club plans to ride that wave by hosting watch parties, and aiming to recruit new members.
‘A game of strategy and finesse’
Kathy Youngs, a retiree from Orchard Park, began curling eight years ago, and was quickly immersed. She and her husband, Bill, are regular players at the Buffalo Curling Club throughout the winter.
“I’ve always been into sports and wanted to try this,” she said. “It is a game of strategy and finesse. Anyone of any age can do it. If you can’t push out of the hack due to physical limitations, you can push out with the stick, as if you’re doing shuffleboard. We’ve had people try this who are in their 90s, down to kids who are 8.”
The hack is an angled tread that is screwed into each end of a curling sheet. Competitors wear one rubber grip shoe, and another with a slider beneath the sole. Squatting on one leg, a curler grasps a 40-pound granite stone, balances, and pushes from the hack, sliding along the ice. Turning the handle during release allows the stone to curl. Following instructions from the Skip, teammates use a brush, or curling broom, to sweep the ice, which reduces friction and allows the stone to travel farther.
A rectangular curling sheet measures between 146 to 150 feet long, and is 14½ to 16½ feet wide. Each end features rings of 4, 8, and 12 feet in diameter, called the “house.” The goal is to accumulate stones closest to the center ring, dubbed the “button.”
It sounds simple. But within those basic tenets are subtleties, variables, and nuances that can take a lifetime to master.
The curling culture is built around good sportsmanship. Players shake hands before a match, wishing one another “good curling.” Games are not cutthroat. Opponents congratulate each other for a nice shot, while distracting or disrespectful play is considered inappropriate. Often afterward, win or lose, food and drink are shared among players on both teams.
Although the sport is associated with Canada, curling began in Scotland in the early 16th century. Scottish settlers brought the game across the Atlantic Ocean, according to online sources. The first recorded curling match in Canada occurred in Montreal in 1807.
Evolution of Curling in Buffalo
Darrell Skelton and Dave Nuwer are two veteran curlers who first participated in the sport during the 1960s at the now-defunct club in Amherst. Both have spent a lifetime around curling. Nuwer competed in the U.S. Men’s National Tournament in Schenectady in 1974. Years later, in 1991, Skelton competed in the same tournament.
“Darrell and I used to figure skate together around 1962 or ’63,” Nuwer said. “When we got to be teenagers, we discovered there were more girls curling than there were figure skating, so we switched.”
Skelton recalls that he and Nuwer spent a few days figure skating each week, then curled on the off days. As they grew into adults, the pair traveled across New York State and into Canada for various bonspiels.
“We’re some of the only remaining members of that club,” Skelton said.
The old Buffalo Curling Club eventually eliminated figure skating due to gouges in the ice, Nuwer explained. Repair was not easy. With no Zamboni, ice was maintained by scraping, shoveling, and balancing a 55-gallon drum filled with hot water atop a wagon, while rolling it back and forth, spraying that water to create a level ice sheet.
Banning figure skaters cost the club significant membership, and its property was sold in 1982, according to a story from the Amherst Bee. Condos occupy that land today. Although the club continued for another two decades without its own rink, curling in Western New York had no home base.
Buchbinder had other ideas.
Amid regular border crossings to Niagara Falls, she dreamed of securing a curling sheet for Buffalo. Around 2008, the Niagara Falls Curling Club’s attendance dipped as border security tightened, with increased restrictions for travel between the U.S. and Canada.
“That’s when I got serious about trying to open a curling club in Buffalo,” Buchbinder recalled. “I didn’t expect anybody to take us seriously. One of my colleagues at the time made some calls to the Grand National Curling Club, whose mission is to support and grow the sport. We scheduled a meeting, just to figure out ways to get started.”
Contacts were made with every ice rink around Western New York, but none had a three-or four-hour block of time when their rinks weren’t being used.
“One said we could rent ice at midnight, but that wasn’t very practical,” Buchbinder said.
A self-professed “talker,” she explained her vision to nearly everyone, including fellow curlers. Along the way, she encountered Matt Goldman, whose marketing job entailed transforming Buffalo’s waterfront silos into advertising space for Labatt’s. Goldman knew the developers of RiverWorks were installing outdoor ice pads, and suggested Buchbinder talk with them.
“We had meetings with Earl Ketry and Doug Swift,” Buchbinder said. “In late 2013, there were two ice pads at RiverWorks. One was intended to be dedicated only to curling. But we didn’t have a club yet. We were just an idea, so they made it so that sheet could be used for hockey too.”
Once curling began outside, the biggest issue was dealing with Mother Nature.
“Curling at RiverWorks was surreal,” reflected Youngs. “You could be curling at one end and there would be a blizzard at the other end.”
Veteran curlers agreed. When Nuwer moved to Mississippi as a young man, he gave up the sport because it wasn’t available in warmer climates. After a 34-year career in Mississippi and Alabama, he returned home in 2013, only to discover that there was no place to curl. It wasn’t long before he heard about a curling sheet at RiverWorks. But conditions were not ideal.
“We’d get the weather,” Nuwer said. “It was next to a cement plant, so we’d get cinders on the ice as well, and that isn’t good for sliding a rock. But, hey, I was back from the South, and it was curling. I only curled there once before deciding I wasn’t going to come back.”
Skelton, another longtime curler, recalled bundling up at RiverWorks to stave off the cold. Beneath so many layers, he found it difficult to throw a stone with any accuracy.
“After having curled at a very high level, I couldn’t really do it. We were outside battling wind and the elements.”
Curling at RiverWorks lasted three years. It was a good starting point, Buchbinder acknowledged, and all these years later, she appreciates the use of the rink there. But if curling was to succeed in Buffalo, she knew that players needed to move inside, where conditions could be controlled.
The Buffalo China factory
Finding their current location was happenstance.
“We were curling at RiverWorks around Christmas 2016,” Buchbinder recalled. “One of our members, Carl Giarrano, had a brother-in-law who owned a shop called 716 China. They offered a holiday discount to the Buffalo Curling Club. We posted to our membership about how this local business was supporting our club.”
A month later, in January 2017, someone sent Buchbinder an article about the former Buffalo China factory, where plates, dishes and bowls had been manufactured for decades. Now vacant, the building had 200,000 square feet of space for lease.
“At the bottom of the story, there was a reference to 716 China,” Buchbinder said. “I called Carl and said, ‘Does your brother-in-law have space to rent?’”
Indeed he did. Buchbinder, who works in real estate, said that when she first toured the building, the old factory felt like a time capsule, a snapshot of history. The plant had closed in 2004.
“It was like one day someone shut the power off and walked out,” she marveled. “There were still plates on racks. Stuff was still in giant kilns. It was very dusty, but the whole experience was incredible.”
Although far from move-in ready, the curlers were able to see potential. Posts that supported the flat roof were 15 feet, 3 inches apart, perfect spacing to allow a long, narrow curling sheet to be frozen between them.
Buchbinder and her informal group met with the building’s owner, Kevin Callahan, and assembled a business plan. They needed $300,000 to purchase equipment, and quickly set about to raise money.
“He drafted a lease with us, before we even had financing, that was contingent upon us getting it,” Buchbinder said. “This changed everything because it gave us a chance to get indoors.”
Nine years later, the space has been transformed. Abandoned kilns have been removed, dust swept from the rafters, and compressors installed. A series of glass panes divide the curling sheets from a warm room. Furniture and carpeting were donated to use in a vast community area. A rail line running through the concrete floor remains visible, a nod to the building’s industrial past. Skelton, a retired teacher, salvaged locker bays that were being discarded from Lackawanna High School, and had them brought to the club.
“The complex’s owner helped clean up,” Skelton said. “But so many of the improvements are membership-driven. We built walls for restrooms and had licensed plumbers do the work. Others donated a pool table and a ping pong table.”
Members volunteer for cleanup duty during the summer, so that ice is ready to be frozen in the fall. The detailed process of flooding four ice sheets takes about two weeks.
The Buffalo Curling Club is currently renegotiating a multi-year lease, so curling at the old china factory should remain intact for the future.
Community involvement
The Buffalo Curling Club has worked to become visible in the community. There are several unique programs that offer the sport to a variety of demographics. One, available through Veterans Affairs, serves former military members.
“Veterans back from a war have seen things that most of us can’t imagine” Buchbinder said. “Our program is structured so it’s not just about the physical side, but addresses how to handle frustrations. It helps promote mental health. It’s amazing that we can do that.”
Youngs concurred.
“The most rewarding thing for me was having veterans come in,” Youngs said. “You see them perk up when they start working together as a team. Working collectively brings them back into their element, and people start to gel.”
Another program is geared for people with special needs. Greater Buffalo Adaptable Sports hosted an informal league on Sundays in January, where people with physical or mental challenges had an opportunity to curl.
A youth program allows kids as young as 8 to throw rocks that are half the weight of a normal 40-pound stone. On two of the four ice sheets, shorter houses are marked halfway down the ice for them.
“We’ve built this up so you get to know people and it becomes a second family,” Youngs reflected. “We’ve even had a woman in a wheelchair who was blind, and used a laser light to sight.”
The Buffalo Curling Club welcomes new members, and has hours where the facility is available for rental. People can bring in food and utilize the ample space. Details can be found on the website.
“We just had a bachelor party come in, and they had great fun,” Youngs said. “A rental is typically two hours and costs $300. We’ll have individuals here to train you on the ice, work with you to understand the needed skills, and then step back so you can have fun. It probably takes 20 or 25 minutes to get you squared away on necessary steps to perform at a rudimentary level. Then as you’re playing, you’ll understand more of how it works.”
Friendly bonspiels with curling clubs in Rochester, Ohio or Pennsylvania happen throughout the winter, with members traveling out of town or hosting fellow curlers when they visit Buffalo.
“Curling provides a person who is less confident in sports with a path to compete,” Youngs said. “I trained a student who was a math whiz. He applied the weight, speed, and sweeping components together to reach his goal.”
Because Buchbinder earned an engineering degree, she appreciates the physics required: moving a rock with a specific speed, or weight, and using that strategy to set up the next shot.
“There are so many components to curling, but three important things are aim, rotation, and weight,” she said. “That’s the only thing you need to make a shot. If you practice you can get good at the first two. But weight is a such a challenge. Ice conditions can change during a game — not week to week but game to game — based on humidity, how many people are in the room, or the weather outside. It’s a thinking person’s game. People say that golf takes a lifetime to master. That’s how I feel with the weight in curling.”
Youngs enjoys all of that, and points out the social aspect as well.
“A tradition after you play is called ‘broom stacking.’ You sit down together, and maybe share a drink or meal, and chat after you play. It provides a platform to expand relationships. Competing in this sport brings together all types of people.”
text © 2026 by Jeff Schober
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Jeff Schober has a journalism degree from Bowling Green State University and a master’s degree in English and History from the University at Buffalo. He retired from teaching English and Journalism at Frontier High School and is the best-selling author of ten books, including the true crime book Bike Path Rapist with Det. Dennis Delano, and the Buffalo Crime Fiction Quartet. Visit his website at www.jeffschober.com.
Steve Desmond is an award-winning photographer. With his son, Francis, he is the author of A Life With A Purpose which raises money for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy research. To view more of Steve's work, search Facebook under "Steve Desmond" and "Desmond's PrimeFocus Photography," or on Instagram at "Stevedesmond9."
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