Coverage That Came Full Circle
Welcome to Stones & Stripes! While I began this humble newsletter in 2024, it all started for me in 2018.
In February of that year, John Shuster, Tyler George, Matt Hamilton, John Landsteiner, and Joe Polo stood atop the podium in South Korea wearing an Olympic gold medal around their necks. In the midst of the celebration and the joy of this weird sport I had gotten hooked into watching, I typed “curling near me” into Google at my work computer on that 24th day of the February.
As it turns out, without realizing it, I lived one mile away from the Green Bay Curling Club. I drove within two blocks of the club almost every single day when I was commuting or running past Lambeau Field. Eight months later, I was finally able to get on the ice and threw my first rocks at a Learn to Curl session before the fall season started. I was hooked immediately. I had already had a blast on the ice, and any questions I had were answered over a pitcher of beer in the club’s warm room at the conclusion of my two-hour session.
I proceeded to join the club, join a league, practice whenever I could over the next two years, and then in 2020, I moved away to Austin, Texas. It was there I discovered how curling means no matter where I go, if there is a curling club, I know I have friends. I began curling on the 5-and-Under circuit, meeting curlers from around the country as I competed in places like Madison, Phoenix, and Fairbanks.
With a lack of access to a dedicated curling facility, I spent my time off of the ice watching whatever games and events were on. Between the joy I found on the ice and the community I discovered off the ice, I knew there were stories to tell.
I originally just planned to talk about what I call “grassroots competitive curling”, curling at club-level events that lead to the arena, club, and 5-and-Under national championships. I wanted to highlight the people who put hours upon hours of time and effort, but for any number of reasons will rarely, if ever, be known about throughout the country. So, in the fall of 2024, Stones & Stripes was born.
But little did I know, there was more in store for me.
Just a short time after starting this newsletter, I was asked to covering curling in the United States for The Curling News. The following season, I migrated to writing for Rock Channel / The Curling Group where I continued my coverage of US curling teams for some of the biggest events on the curling calendar, including the US Olympic Trials, the Winter Olympics, and the World Men’s Curling Championship in Ogden, Utah where I found myself interviewing curlers like John Shuster and Matt Hamilton.
Just eight years after they won gold, the very curlers who helped inspire me to pick up a broom and slide out of the hack were the same curlers I was interviewing as they came off the ice.
Today, I continue to write about grassroots competitive curling through this newsletter, and I will also sporadically post here with stories of the top curlers in the country in my Tour Talks section of the site.
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Where to find me
If you have questions, always feel free to contact me through Substack.
I am active on social media (Instagram, Twitter, and BlueSky at the handle hoppecurls. Links for my personal social media can be found on the home page.
I do play a few events on the mixed doubles tour with my teammate, Sidney Schroeder. If you wish to keep up to date with our team, find us below:
