There’s a new professional league for curling, that sport you may have seen during the Winter Olympics earlier this year. It’s where teams have to slide a stone along the ice toward a target, with a lot of frantic movements and yelling along the way.
Utica is one of the few places in the U.S. hosting an upcoming tournament.
The name of curling’s first professional league is the Rock League, and while that refers to the curling stone, there’s plenty of rock music played during the high energy matches.
They had an abbreviated stretch of matches earlier this year, and now Utica will be one of five host communities in the U.S. and Canada in January 2027.
The captain of one of the teams is Korey Dropkin, who along with Cory Thiesse, won a silver medal in this year’s Winter Olympics in Italy. That marked the first-ever medal for the U.S. in mixed doubles.
Dropkin notes the old stereotype of curlers being, well, maybe a bit overweight, even having a beer or a cigarette during a match, doesn’t cut it anymore in the elite competitions where the athletes need to be in top form.
“I’m trying to pop up, catch up to my stone and sweep it, putting all of my weight onto a carbon fiber broom and giving huge bursts of energy for 20, 25 seconds,” Dropkin said.
Dropkin, who started curling as a boy in Massachusetts at the age of five, hopes that between the recent Olympics and more publicity about the sport, more young people can make a career out of professional curling.
“I want to be able to have curling be a sport where kids around the U.S., boys and girls, can grow up and dream about being a professional curler and having that dream be one that’ll also pay financially,” said Dropkin.
Oneida County Tourism President Sarah Calero says the upcoming tournament could provide a nice economic boost for the Utica area.
“They need to eat and they want their coffee and they maybe want to go out and socialize a little bit,” Calero said, “so then it really creates that economic impact trickle.”
Utica has a very long tradition of embracing curling. In a nearby hamlet, Clark Mills, Scottish and English textile workers organized curling events in 1832.
In 1868, the Utica Curling Club was formed and now that club has almost 300 members.
One of the directors of the club, Bill Mahoney, said this year’s Winter Olympics gave a nice boost to interest in the sport. He noted that many curlers on the professional level had their start as kids.
“All of these curlers at one point in time started out as junior curlers in a local curling club, and they’re now these international level players that we all are excited to watch and cheer on, especially our Americans,” said Mahoney.
The competition featuring the new curling league gets underway runs from January 28 – 31, 2027 at the NTB Bank Arena in Utica.