An unconventional sports tournament will be sliding into Pittsburgh this weekend. The Pittsburgh Curling Club will be hosting the 5 and Under World Championships from Thursday to Sunday at its facility in McKees Rocks.
Curling is a sport in which two teams of players slide weighted stones down a sheet of ice, aiming at a circular target on the ice. It often receives more attention during the Winter Olympics, where it’s been a medal sport since 1998.
The upcoming tournament will see 16 teams from within and outside the U.S. taking to the ice. For this “five-and-under” competition, all players must have five or less years of experience to ensure an even playing field. The tournament is the first time the five-and-under category will have its own world championship.
“The USA has been holding a five-and-under national championship for a couple of years now,” said Dustin Devine, a board member with the Pittsburgh Curling Club. “They got to talking like, ‘We should challenge Canada. We should try to make it an international thing.’”
After USA Curling and other curling organizations planned the competition, they selected Pittsburgh as the location. According to Devine, teams from Canada, the Philippines, Israel and a team of players from several countries in Asia will compete alongside U.S. teams.
“One of the teams there had curled in Pittsburgh at one of our tournaments last year, and they knew our club was still relatively a newer club,” he explained. “So they thought, ‘Well, let's go have it at Pittsburgh. They've got good ice, they've got plenty of room.’”
Unlike the “curling hotbed” of the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, Devine said, Pittsburgh is not as well-known as a location for the spot. The club was founded in 2002 and has been in its current facility at 491 McCoy Road since 2020. Before 2020, the club rented ice at the Robert Morris University Island Sports Center on Neville Island, but its facility now features an assemblage of four curling ice sheets and a “warm room” for spectators.
An event like the championship is an exciting chance to get more people interested in the sport, according to Trevor Mathey, another club board member.
“Curling is a super-accessible sport,” he said. “It's probably one of the only Olympic sports that, regardless of your age or your athletic abilities or physical disabilities you might have, it is a sport that basically anyone can participate in. It's super-adaptive.”
Though the tournament is an invitational, those interested in the sport in general don’t have to be curling experts to try their hand — the club hosts “Learn to Curl” events twice a month.
“Especially [for] a five-and-under curling like this, you didn't have to start playing when you're 12. You could have started in your 20s, in your 30s,” Devine said. “And that's what's great about curling. It's such a sport that is open to such a diverse group of people.”
Mathey is competing as a skip in the tournament — a role that’s akin to a team captain. He said he enjoys the sport for its strategy and its camaraderie.
“They call it chess on ice. And that's a very appropriate term because it's a game of nonstop thinking, and I really enjoy that,” he said. “But also, curling is a sport that is very social … People are out on the ice having fun, joking, hanging out after the game, so you get a really fun competitive game, but you also get a really great social environment in curling as well.”
Those interested in watching the tournament can watch online at the Pittsburgh Curling Club YouTube page, or in person at the club’s facility at 491 McCoy Road.
