In Lakeville, Curling Is The Newest High School Sport
LAKEVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) -- It's the coolest new thing in school -- for students in Lakeville, at least.
"It's competitive, but also it's really relaxed, like you don't have to do a lot of physical activity, which I'm kind of happy about, it's not strenuous," Lakeville North junior Joseph Finkel said.
The Lakeville School District just approved curling as its newest official high school sport. Kids can even letter in it on this co-op team between Lakeville North and South.
It's believed to be the first school district in the metro area to offer curling as an official high school sport, and possibly even the whole state.
"There weren't any other high school teams, which was very surprising for me because, coming from Canada, moving here six years ago, I thought it strange that -- in Canada there's a large number of high school teams and that's how they play competitively," coach John Anderson said. "And here it was just teams associated with curling clubs and that sort of stuff. So if we can get the high school involvement there, and then transcend to other curling clubs and other high schools, I think it'll be a great sport."
That is the goal, to grow it into a full-fledged high school sport.
"I'm told in the 70s they had a pretty competitive high school league, and since then it's kind of petered out. But now we're trying to get high school curling back in to a state-level organization. And at the end of the year have a state-sanctioned bonspiel or tournament," Anderson said.
"I'd love that. Because I feel like the more high schools we get to join it, we can actually turn it into an actual high school sport, instead of just a high school team," Lakeville North junior Alex Melby said. "We can actually turn this into a Varsity-JV sport, and I'd really like to see that happen."