Curling helps maintain women’s physical health, keeps them active and connected to other people in the community and is a fun way to support the community, new research has documented.
On the negative side, declining rural population often means fewer resources to keep the rinks open.
Growing up on a farm at Beadle, Sask., visits to the local curling rink were simply part of life for curling researcher Beverly Leipert.
They were part of the school’s physical education program and a key part of community life.
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“It was very much a community spirit thing to do,” she said. “There is an egalitarian side to curling that brings everyone together as equals on the ice.”
Then, she curled on natural ice with its occasionally finicky conditions.
These days, she curls on the more predictable artificial ice at a rink in London, Ont., where she is an associate professor of nursing at the University of Western Ontario and a lead author of the study on the role curling plays in the health and community lives of rural Canadian women.
It is mid-point in a three-year study funded by a $134,000 grant from Sports Canada. Researchers are recording the experiences and impressions of 64 women and girls in rural communities in Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and the Northwest Territories.
“The project looks at the effect of curling on rural women’s health, physical, mental and community,” Leipert said. “We are finding the benefits are quite substantial. It is really a way for rural women who often are isolated to connect and be part of the community.”
But as rural communities decline, rinks often close and finding a curling venue is more difficult and involves more travel. Declining population also means fewer volunteers to run the rinks and stage bonspiels.
Curling tends to get overshadowed by hockey in rural communities and there is a need for more coaching and support for girls and women curlers in small communities, she said.
And Leipert complained that media do not give curling events and accomplishments the coverage and profile that hockey receives.
“It really is an undervalued sport and yet it is huge in much of rural Canada,” she said. “It has benefits and needs a higher profile.”
Her academic work may help make that happen.
She said the study involving collaborators from the University of Western Ontario, University of Waterloo, Dalhousie University in Halifax and the University of Manitoba likely is the first serious research on the impact of curling on rural women’s health in Canada.
And the fact that Sport Canada is funding it also may be a first.
The women and girls in the study groups were issued cameras and logbooks to record their experiences and their assessment of the impact of curling on their physical and social health. Then they gather with the researchers to discuss and analyze what they have recorded.
“I really think this is the first of its kind,” said Leipert.
