Aksarben Curling Club

About Aksarben Curling Club

Aksarben Curling Club: Omaha’s Olympic Trials Host Eyes Its Own Ice

Aksarben Curling Club has carried curling in Omaha since the late 1950s. The game arrived when Darwin Curtis of the Chicago Curling Club approached Jake Isaacson, general manager of the Ak-Sar-Ben race track, and for four decades the club played in the old 4-H Barn on what is now the University of Nebraska Omaha’s Scott Campus, rebuilding the ice each season. That barn produced a remarkable junior run: a 1996 national junior women’s title and a trip to the world championships in Red Deer, Alberta, men’s junior national titles from 1998 to 2001 with two world junior bronze medals, and a women’s team that finished sixth at the 2000 world championships.

Today the club curls on five sheets laid on the hockey ice of UNO’s Baxter Arena, and it calls itself the largest curling club in the country playing on hockey ice. Baxter Arena hosted the U.S. Olympic Curling Trials twice, in 2017 and in November 2021, with the club partnering the Omaha Sports Commission; the trials sent learn-to-curl numbers soaring, with around 1,500 people taught. Its men’s and women’s teams have also competed at the Arena National Championships in Las Vegas.

Around 300 curlers now play weekly, and membership more than doubled after Team USA’s mixed doubles silver medal at the 2026 Milan Games. To meet demand, the Aksarben Curling Association is building toward a dedicated five-sheet curling facility near the Moylan Iceplex at Tranquility Park, which would open the door to wheelchair, adaptive and after-school curling.