Chattanooga contest is enjoyable preview for Olympics : NPR

A competitor makes a toss over the past day of the Annual Skillet Curling Championship at First Horizon Pavilion in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Sunday.

Aileen Perilla for NPR

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Aileen Perilla for NPR

When you place a downhome spin on an Olympic sport, you are sure to alter the lingo a bit. Consider this description of skillet curling, a twist on conventional curling.

“You throw the bacon, and then throw the skillet kind of like you’re bowling, trying to get closest to the bacon,” explains Emily Rasmussen. She was a part of one of many 32 groups that competed within the Skillet Curling Championship in Chattanooga, Tenn., over the weekend.

Instead of the stationary bullseye that’s the goal for normal curlers, on this area of interest sport, the “bacon” is the gamers’ goal — a grill press, to maintain it culinary — that’s hurled down the ice earlier than every spherical. Then groups take turns launching iron skillets in hopes of getting them bacon-adjacent, and in addition blocking the opposite workforce’s skillets.

Phil Harris kneels all the way down to measure the gap between skillets.

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That might sound a bit technical, however the Chattanooga event, which began in 2019 and is certainly one of a handful of comparable occasions within the U.S., is a charity occasion that aims to combine “equal parts skill, luck, and hilarity.”

“It’s like a Mardi Gras sport, in a way,” says competitor Alvaro Victoria. “It’s flamboyant, it’s fun, it’s social.”

Throwing turtles, in hopes of a stovetop

Scoring is just like conventional curling, which awards factors on the finish of every spherical for stones that stay nearer to the goal than any opposing items. In skillet curling, a workforce scoring 4 factors – the utmost doable in every spherical – is a “stovetop.”

Skillet curling is a bit like bocce on ice, Rasmussen says. But whereas it might sound inelegant to yeet iron skillets throughout an ice rink, the game does contain approach.

Spectators cheer over the past day of the Annual Skillet Curling Championship.

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Traditional curling has received followers with intense athletes who famously get very low and slide themselves ahead earlier than releasing a stone. Most skillet curlers merely stoop a bit earlier than sending a frying pan clattering onto the ice.

Even so, there are alternative ways to throw the skillet, says Phil Harris, the event’s govt director who additionally competes. Some gamers crouch; others get on their fingers and knees. The skillet may be deployed right-side up, or the wrong way up — referred to as a “turtle,” for its domed look.

“People will throw turtles a lot if there’s a lot of skillets around the bacon,” Harris says, “if they really want to move a lot of stuff out of the way.”

A unfastened ambiance, to profit charity

What it lacks in historical past and worldwide recognition, skillet curling makes up for in enthusiasm and creativity. Most groups put on coordinated costumes; names embrace the Wu-Tang Pans; Natural Born Curlers; Cornbread & Butterbeans; Curling Irons; Rock, Paper, Skillets; and Krakens Kilts.

April Watson, who competes on The Breakfast Club, prepares for a toss.

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Victoria is the captain of Los Guapos, named after the villain within the film Three Amigos!. When requested in regards to the captain’s duties on recreation day, he says it is fairly easy.

“I mean, basically, encourage my team to drink heavily before we play.”

But, Victoria provides, captains additionally pump up opponents and followers and lead fundraising efforts.

John Coffelt (left) of the Kraken Kilts makes a toss as his teammate Tom Montague waits for his flip.

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It’s free to attend the three-day competitors, which concluded Sunday. Still, the occasion raises hundreds of {dollars} — from workforce fundraising, together with beer and concession gross sales — in donations to the Chattanooga Area Food Bank, which serves 20 counties. As of Monday morning, organizers had raised $90,000 towards their $100,000 aim for this yr’s occasion.

The challenges of utmost climate, imperfect ice

The Chattanooga event has grown shortly, Harris says. At that first tourney in 2019, eight groups threw skillets on an out of doors rink. Now, 32 groups compete underneath a coated pavilion.

Its sponsors embrace the cookware firm Lodge Cast Iron, primarily based in close by South Pittsburg. Some Lodge staff, similar to Rasmussen, additionally compete, however a very powerful factor the corporate provides are the curling skillets, that are drawn from manufacturing facility seconds.

Harris says he requested for about 200 skillets for the 2026 event, a quantity that features dozens of replacements. “A four-hour session will break 8 to 12 skillets,” he says.

Pans usually tend to break in excessive chilly. And for many of this weekend, match-time temperatures have been within the teenagers and 20s.

“Everyone has to think about how the cold is going to affect the ice and their throws,” says April Watson, who competes on The Breakfast Club. “The ice is very slippery. You’re really just out there trying not to fall while you’re playing.”

The floor may also differ due to skating periods that go away the rink frosted with small chunks of ice.

“You never know if the skillet is going to slide straight or veer off course, and you’re just hoping and praying that the other team doesn’t knock your skillet off the bacon,” Watson says.

While Olympic curling evokes scenes of athletes furiously scrubbing the ice with brooms to have an effect on a stone’s trajectory, this model additionally has brooms — however they’re commonplace ironmongery shop sweepers.

“I do bring two brooms out,” Harris says. “They don’t do anything other than give the team something to hold, and make them feel like they’re doing something.”

A sport that is “completely meaningless” — however enjoyable

Chattanooga, Tenn., is much from curling’s roots in Scotland, the place granite stones are quarried for Olympic athletes to ship spinning towards an icy bull’s-eye. But skillet curlers say they’re followers of each sports activities.

The official bracket of winners and losers of the Annual Skillet Curling Championship.

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In reality, Victoria says that years in the past, he regarded into the opportunity of forming an Olympic curling workforce representing his native Mexico, alongside the traces of the Jamaican bobsled workforce. That effort did not go anyplace — however, he says, skillet curling has panned out another way.

“It is completely meaningless, as far as the sport itself,” Victoria says. “But just being out there, as silly as it sounds, on the ice with friends, having a couple of drinks and doing it for a good cause, it’s nice.”

This yr’s version ended with a nail-biting end between two perennial contenders, because the Heavy Stones battled the Kraken’s Kilts.

Sunday’s dramatic remaining topped the Heavy Stones for a fifth time in Chattanooga, however the festivities aren’t fairly over. Teams will reconvene later this week for a taco bar dinner, a live performance and an awards ceremony for prime performers and fundraisers, and finest costumes. By then, the curling competitors shall be underway on the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.