SU club curling’s regional championship win foreshadows an ‘optimistic’ future

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When Paul Mokotoff, the founder of Syracuse’s club curling, graduated in 2022, concerns for the team’s future arose. Having seen other clubs in the region crumble after senior members left, the departure of the squad’s upper-class core created uncertainty.

“One of my fears when I graduated was, ‘How is this thing going to survive?’” Mokotoff said. “So back in 2022, I had stepped down as president and let someone else take over — prove that somebody else could run the club and other people could teach other people how to curl.”

Mokotoff, a curler since high school, founded the club in March 2018 at Utica Curling Club, located about 45 minutes away from SU, with sociology professor Rebecca Schewe, a curler at the club. That fall, Syracuse’s club curling team had seven registered members at the Club Sports Fair.

In its debut year, the team made a surprising national tournament appearance, a feat it’s repeated every year since. This season, it reached a new achievement: its first regional title, winning the Grand National Curling Club Collegiate Championship.

“Winning regionals was super fulfilling,” said Adam Wingert, a curler on the regional roster. “To win it all is a huge honor, and it is great having that (memory) with the team.”

Mokotoff’s worst fears of the team’s collapse never came true. Under its current president, Melanie Salas, an SU senior, the club’s membership has remained at around a dozen.

“Although I’m quite a distance away, I did hear about the win and I was very proud of them,” Mokotoff said.

Salas, who grew up dancing, joined the team after a group of friends convinced her to, though she was the only one to follow through on joining. She had no previous curling experience and didn’t ice skate, but found shared principles of balance and passion between dance and curling. Today, she’s the club’s first-ever female president.

Pierce Neubert (left) , Adam Wingert (second from left), Alexander Reid (second from right) and Melanie Salas (right) head Syracuse club curling’s four-person team at the national tournament in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Courtesy of Alexander Reid

Most of SU’s club curlers join the team with little to no experience, though many have a sports background. At the beginning, “everyone sucks,” a unifying experience that Alexander Reid, a first-time curler, was drawn to.

“It’s doing something completely new for the first time,” Reid said. “You’re in the same boat with a bunch of other people, so you make really good friends through that common connection of, ‘This is really hard, but let’s see where we can go.’”

To start the season, the club holds “Learn to Curl” events at the Tennity Ice Skating Pavilion to teach new curlers. It is led by older members of the team or those with prior curling experience.

The club also hosts weekly Sunday practices in Utica and attends bonspiels — weekend curling competitions that feature several games and multiple teams. At early-season “team development” tournaments, the squad gives experience to younger curlers and learns how to strategize as a unit, Wingert said.

“It’s a lot of fun to watch people get into the sport, there’s a lot to learn and it can be pretty tricky to get things down,” Wingert said.

At practices, the team is coached by Schewe and Utica Curling Club’s M.J. Walsh and Roger Rowlett. Due to the learning curve of curling, early tournaments don’t always go well.

“Your first month curling, you’re going to get destroyed…but I still came to the next week because all I learned was, ‘Now I see what everyone else is doing, I really want to compete at that level,’” Reid said.

As the season progresses, the club identifies its core and increases its competitiveness at bonspiels. Syracuse attends tournaments in the northeast hosted by clubs such as Princeton and Yale.

Syracuse graduate student Josef Komissar said the club’s small roster allows for a “tight-knit” group of curlers of varying levels of curling experience, which he said is critical for a niche sport. He and the rest of the team were thrilled to find out that regionals would be held “at home,” the Utica Curling Club.

“It’s fantastic to have all these college curlers hanging out in the (Utica) Curling Club,” Komissar said. “Everyone’s pretty friendly…(we get) out on the ice to compete with them and still have these good friends on the other teams after the games.”

Josef Komissar (left) , Pierce Neubert (second from left), Adam Wingert (second from right) and Alexander Reid (right) are awarded first place in the Grand National Curling Club Collegiate Championship, the regional tournament, beating out the defending champions, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Courtesy of Alexander Reid

Regional championships are a recent addition to college curling. At the tournament, SU went undefeated and finished first out of 24 teams. The club beat the defending champions, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, whose club is twice as large as Syracuse’s, to win the trophy.

“It was a dream come true,” Reid said.

Following the regionals victory in early February, the team traveled to the 2024 United States Curling Association’s National Championship in Rice Lake, Wisconsin.

Yet, Syracuse had a lackluster showing at the national tournament, losing in the first round. Despite the exit, the club drew positives from its tournament appearance.

“(It was) great to see some of the people we’ve been playing with from other schools (at nationals),” Komissar said. “Even if we didn’t perform as well, competitively, we still had a really good time and learned a lot of things that I think will carry forward into next year.”

Schewe said she is “optimistic” about the club’s future. She added that good recruitment has grown the team since its founding, and this year, strategy and play continue to “advance” to higher levels. Reid said that SU will look to mirror other programs’ core squad and backup squad set-ups going forward.

“The nationals team was headed by two sophomores. I think that’s really promising because they also headed the regionals team, led the team to victory in the regional championship,” Komissar said. “I think it’s looking pretty good for the future.”