Winter along Minnesota’s North Shore has a rhythm all its own. The season brings a slower pace for many residents, who try to remain active, socialize, and make the most of the reduced daylight hours.
Throughout the winter months, residents take to the local ski trails, spend time ice fishing on lakes, and find ways to stay occupied and connected during the long, cold season. For many along the North Shore, staying connected means joining a curling club. It’s often a welcoming place to meet neighbors, be social, and make winter feel just a little bit shorter.
In towns along the North Shore, from Thunder Bay to Duluth, the local curling rink serves as a hub of activity, bringing people together on winter days and weeknights. From the long-established Duluth Curling Club to the close-knit Cook County Curling Club, these rinks and their members offer something more than competition.
“Most curlers are very social, and it’s part of the game,” said Kerry Hadiaris, the general manager of the Duluth Curling Club.
For over 130 years, the Duluth Curling Club has brought Twin Ports residents together. Initially launched in 1891, the curling club began underneath a tent between two retaining walls on East Superior Street. Throughout the years, the club has grown, eventually moving into the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) in the late 1970s.
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Hadiaris was first introduced to the world of curling in 2005 while she was a grad student at the University of Minnesota–Duluth. On her way to a hockey game one day, she saw a Duluth Curling Club advertisement in the skywalk and the “rest is history,” she said.
Twenty years later, she’s the general manager of the over 700-member curling club. Throughout the past two decades, Hadiaris said being a part of the curling club has been a helpful activity to keep active and engaged during the long winter months.
“I have found it’s a physical game, and it’s very much a mental game with strategy,” she said. “But there’s also the social aspect of it—I’ve made a lot of friends.”
With over 700 members, ranging from age 6 to 87, the Duluth Curling Club staff are busy year-round setting schedules, planning bonspiels, scheduling watch parties, and more. Each year, the club holds 12 bonspiels, a competitive curling tournament for its members.
The bonspiels attract a diverse group of curlers, many of whom travel across the country or from Canada to compete in the winter competitions.
“We get people from all over the country,” Hadiaris said. “We have a lot of Thunder Bay people that come down, and people from other states on the east and west coast.”
One of the anticipated watch parties this winter will be in February during the Winter Olympics. Two Duluth Curling Club members, Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin, will travel to Italy to represent the U.S. and compete in the mixed doubles curling event. The February watch party will be an opportunity for fellow curling club members to gather and cheer for Thiesse and Dropkin during the international event.
“People come down to the club to watch with each other and cheer them on. We’ll have food and drinks available too,” Hadiaris said.
Ahead of the February Olympics, Hadiaris said the Duluth Curling Club will host fundraisers to raise money to cover the costs of Thiesse and Dropkin’s families traveling to Italy to watch them compete.
Hadiaris said northern Minnesota’s deep roots and long-standing traditions in the sport make it “a mecca for curling.” The Duluth Curling Club ranks as the second-largest in the U.S., surpassed only by the 1,200-member St. Paul Curling Club.
“I love that about curling, that there are small clubs in our state, like Cook County, and there are bigger clubs like St. Paul, where you have hundreds of members,” Hadiaris said. “It’s a really cool fabric of a community.”
Small town curling clubs, like the Cook County Curling Club or the Two Harbors Curling Club, offer something a little different than their larger counterparts in Duluth or St. Paul. When walking into the local community center, members are greeted by their neighbors, classmates, a former teacher at the high school, or, for many in a small town, a relative.
Over the years, the Cook County Curling Club’s membership has fluctuated, typically ranging from the 50s to the 60s. This year, however, the Cook County Curling Club saw an increase in memberships.
“I think we’re going to be closer to 75 or 80 this year,” said Katy Smith, a Cook County Curling Club board member. While a core group of longtime curlers remains, this winter brings a fresh wave of new faces to the ice.
The club hosts curling leagues on Mondays and Wednesdays each week, with multiple bonspiels scheduled throughout the winter. The Cook County Curling Club will host the Cabin Fever Fun Spiel on Jan. 17, 2026, the two-person Champagne Open Bonspiel on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, and the Charles J. Futterer Memorial Open Bonspiel is scheduled for Feb. 27-28, and March 1.
Smith said she looks forward to the bonspiels each year because the event draws curlers from neighboring areas, such as Thunder Bay and the Iron Range. “It’s always interesting, the different clubs that come in, especially the Canadian curlers, they play such a different game, their strategy, and how they would deliver rocks and stuff.”
She said, “It’s a lot of learning and intense physical games all weekend.”
Smith said the club also hosts $20 drop-in curling nights that are a “social night” to allow newcomers to try curling. “It’s fun just to see people come in and view it, because they’ve been interested in it for so long,” she said.
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For Smith and fellow board member Joanne Smith, longtime members with decades on the ice, the curling club has been both a source of joy and a meaningful part of their lives.
“Curling is very, very social,” Smith said. “It’s the camaraderie.”
And it’s also helped pass the time during the long winter months.
“Winters are so long. It’s a good activity to fill your time in the winter,” Joanne said.
Both of their husbands are also active in the club, and at the start of each season, the couples join a small volunteer crew to put in the ice at the Cook County Community Center. The process takes close to three weeks. The volunteer crew carefully floods the floor layer by layer to achieve the perfect thickness for curling stones to glide smoothly.
While putting in the ice is a significant preseason effort, the all-volunteer Cook County Curling Club board also undertakes the tasks of organizing league nights, coordinating bonspiels, and raising funds for equipment upgrades.
Joanne said the club is currently saving money for the purchase of the bullseye, also known as the “house,” the target area for curlers to aim at.
With new faces joining the club this year, Joanne and Smith hope to continue building on the club’s momentum and recruit more members in the coming winter. The club’s focus, looking toward the future, will be to find ways to connect with others in the community and to encourage them to take “that initial step,” Smith said.
