Granite Curling Club of California

About Granite Curling Club of California

Granite Curling Club of California: Have Stones, Will Travel

The Granite Curling Club of California is a curling club without a home rink, and proud of it. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, it lives by the motto “Have Stones, Will Travel,” carrying its stones across the state to bring curling to places that have none. The original Granite club was formed in the early 1960s, went dormant in the 1980s and was revived around 2015 as an outreach organization.

Its members run Learn to Curl sessions and mini-games wherever there is ice, from Stockton, Santa Cruz and Palm Springs to Yosemite and Mammoth Lakes. That work has left a trail of new curling: Granite established the base in Mammoth Lakes that now runs its own leagues, helped launch a club in Stockton, where the Oak Park Ice Arena on Alvarado Avenue runs a curling league, and brought the game to Santa Cruz. The club also reinstated the California state championships in 2018 and hosts the annual Desert Spiel near Palm Springs.

Club president Alice Mansell, a curler of some 30 years and a former competitive figure skater, and traveling member Richard Lazarowich have been among its driving forces. The club has also gathered records of curling in California going back nearly a century, and it is a member of the Mountain Pacific Curling Association.