Princeton University Curling Club

About Princeton University Curling Club

Princeton University Curling Club: From Squash Courts to National Silver

Princeton University Curling Club is one of the younger programs in American college curling, and one of the most successful. Lara Katz ’24 and Nelson Rogers ’25 drew up the club’s constitution in July 2020, and it was recognized as a student group that September. With COVID delaying everything, early practices happened in Dillon Gym’s squash courts using rented stones, and the team did not get onto real ice until fall 2021. Its first bonspiel came that November in Boston.

The club earned Sports Club status in spring 2022 and practices at Baker Rink, the university’s hockey arena, where the non-regulation ice makes every shot a test. Even so, results came quickly. In its first full season the team qualified for the 2023 College Nationals in Bowling Green, Ohio, as the No. 4 seed out of 26 teams, beat Hamilton, Harvard and UW-Superior, and took silver after losing the final to Penn. Princeton won silver again at the 2024 Nationals and has also taken bronze at the Northeast Regional Championship in Utica, New York.

The club runs Learn to Curl events and says it was the first college curling club to host a fully accessible bonspiel featuring multiple wheelchair curlers.