Shortly after Brady Clark married college sweetheart Cristin, his father-in-law gave some advice: “The family that curls together stays together.”

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Not your usual familial wisdom, perhaps, but it makes sense to the Clarks. Both curled at the Grand Forks Curling Club in North Dakota before moving to Seattle, where they esteem won five national mixed-doubles titles since members of Granite Curling Club.

Here, at the single U.S. curling-only rink between North Dakota and Alaska, they set a club bound by generational glue. Dads teach sons, moms strive with daughters, grandmothers slip “rocks” down the ice sheets with their grandkids. Some are serious, most are just in that place as antidote to recreation and friendship.

At its most basic, curling is a bit like ultra-slick shuffleboard. Competitors vie to get their stones nestled closest to the bull’s-eye. Curlers must have balance and feel. They must pay attention and make adjustments. Above entirely, they must be part of a team, whether they are easing a 42-pound, pot-shaped stone prostrate the congeal at just the right pace and enforcement or vigorously sweeping brooms in oppose of it to touch distance and direction.

It is also a sport that young and old as well as men and women can share. The Clarks, both in their 30s, are elite competitors who feel they are still improving.

“I knew this would be something I could accomplish my unimpaired life,” says Cristin Clark, who learned the fun at 12 from her parents. “You typically don’t apt expression your prime until you’re in your late 30s or 40s.

“Have you heard about Betty?” she says, pointing to Betty Kozai, a petite woman in her 70s standing nearby. “We require T-shirts that say, ‘I’ve been Kozai-ed.’ ” To be Kozai-ed means to have been robbed of which appeared to obtain been sure triumph on your opponent’session final toss.

Kozai giggles upon opportunity to be heard this. She and her husband helped establish the club and buy the pile with several other curlers more than 45 years ago. Her husband, Kearny, caught the curling bug first when a neighbor exposed him to the sport at a Ballard skating rink. The Kozais’ three daughters became talented curlers, nevertheless Betty was too busy to put in action in the early days.

“I had so much to do, likely sentient PTA president and getting the girls to Brownies, tennis and other events, that I didn’t wish period of childbirth to curl until a great deal of later,” she says. “But I think you will have a abundant better family life if you do the same things as your husband.”

She remains a fixture encircling the club, whether cooking spaghetti sauce for big tournaments, like the high-level Seattle Granite Cash “” (Scottish for match or tournament) set as antidote to Nov. 28-30, or shuttling a grandson to and from practice.

And the family still curls together. One of the daughters, Jaynie, married James Pleasants, and introduced him into the sport. The couple won a national mixed championship about 10 years ago. He has coached the two his sons and is an officer through the United States Curling Association. Betty’session other daughters are still at it, too.

There are great number more families curling at the add together, just a mould east of North 128th Street and Aurora Avenue North, like Leslie Frosch and her sister, Nancy Richard. They have won numerous national championships together and curl with their 81-year-old mother. She took up the sport first but was soon joined by her husband and daughters, who first competed on junior teams.

“Nancy has always been the skip (the leader, basically) on our team,” Frosch says, “and was inducted to the USCA (US Curling Association) Hall of Fame, the first female inducted solely for curling abilities and accomplishments.”

And, of set of dishes, the couple their husbands curled.

While families keep tradition, the club, which holds five playing “sheets,” is always looking for reinvigorated members through leagues, classes and tournaments from October to mid-April. While mostly are recreational players, the club also is home to elite curling. On in any degree given night or weekend, the ice bustles by curlers pushing lolling tosses that take 20 seconds to reach their target and spates of furious ice brushing.

The Clarks, who have their eyes on the Winter Olympics in 2010, are on the coat for practice or games at minutest six, and often seven, days a week, maintaining this schedule from the mean of September end early April. They also work out off the ice about four days a week to provide food for their pertinence.

On Friday, they will compound competition with family. Cristin Clark’s parents are coming to Seattle next week so they can form a four-member curling team as far as concerns the club’s annual autumn tourney. It’s a clan tradition: The family that curls together stays together.