Wilmette Curling Club

About Wilmette Curling Club

Wilmette Curling Club: North Shore Curlers and a 1985 National Title

Wilmette Curling Club carries the name of Wilmette, the North Shore suburb north of Chicago, where curling has a long history: in the 1930s the local paper was already announcing the opening of the curling season at Indian Hill, one of the North Shore golf clubs where the Scottish game was played in winter. The Wilmette club itself was founded in 1968.

Rather than run its own building, Wilmette curls at the Chicago Curling Club in Northbrook, at Dundee Road and the Edens Expressway. That means four sheets of dedicated curling ice in a club that itself grew out of curling at Indian Hill Country Club and opened in 1948, with a season running from October through March.

Wilmette’s best-known moment came in 1985, when Tim Wright skipped a Wilmette rink to the U.S. Men’s Curling Championship in Mequon, Wisconsin, and went on to finish fourth at the World Championship that year. The club remains one of nine members of the Midwest Curling Association, alongside the Chicago, Exmoor, Northwestern, Waltham and Windy City clubs.