Rhinelander Curling Club men’s team wins state championship

The Rhinelander Curling Club men’s team missed out on a chance to the national tournament last year. This year, they advanced in dramatic fashion.

Rhinelander beat the La Crosse Curling Club men’s team 2-1 in a best-of-three playdown at the Eau Claire Curling Club March 22-23. Rhinelander punched their tickets to the Men’s and Women’s Arena Club National Championships held in Las Vegas in October.

The four members of Rhinelander’s team are Peter Chladil and Randy Louis of Lac du Flambeau, Joe Ross from Minocqua and Rick Peterson from Rhinelander.

“Our lead is Rick Peterson and then throwing second is Joe Ross. I was the vice skip throwing third,” Louis said. “And then throwing fourth as the skip was Pete Chladil. We’re a very new team. We’re very limited on our experience, especially compared to the La Crosse team. Three of us on that team only have two years of experience while (Peter) — the guy who throws fourth — he has probably about 10 years of experience. We were ecstatic. We’re definitely the underdogs in the situation and somehow just pulled it together and figured it out.”

Because Rhinelander and La Crosse are the only two arena curling clubs in the state, they were the two teams that faced off against each other for the state championship and a trip to Nationals.

“There’s actually only two clubs in the state that curl on arena ice, and that’s Rhinelander and La Crosse,” Louis said. “It’s basically your typical championship sort of bracket if you would. Each club has their teams face off against each other, and whoever wins out of that then goes to the state playdown. The state obviously only has two arena curling clubs. It’s just us versus La Crosse. Like I said, we did a three-game playdown so best of three. Also, our women’s team won. They did a single-game playdown like we did last year. Basically, whoever wins punches their ticket to the … national tournament.”

Last year, La Crosse won the playdown to go to Nationals, but it was a one-game playdown. Rhinelander avenged their loss from last year.

“We played this team last year in the state playdown, and we lost,” Louis said. “It was only a one-game playdown last year. It was a three-game series this year. I think just that one more year of experience (paid dividends). Also, I know as far as me and Joe Ross ... we did a lot of studying, I guess you could say. We did a lot of research on technique. We watched a lot of videos, a lot of Olympic videos of the Olympic gold medal team with Matt Hamilton, stuff like that, and I think that really helped us, especially with our decision-making — what to throw, when to throw it and where to place the stones.”

Louis put in extra time to prepare for the state championship.

“Practice is very limited for us because we curl out of the Rhinelander Ice Arena,” he said. “Our only time to practice on the ice are Sunday evenings or early Monday mornings. For me personally, I actually took a step forward this year and decided to not work on Monday mornings so that I could curl both Sunday and Monday. That’s how into it I’ve gotten this year. As far as going over the videos and stuff like that … at least probably every two weeks or so Joe and I would meet up and just discuss everything curling.”

La Crosse had the advantage after the first game. They won game one 9-6 on Saturday, March 22.

“We had lost the first game. It was really close battle, back-and-forth — one and one and one and one,” Louis said. “They kind of really ran away with it there at the end. They scored one in the fifth. They scored four in the sixth and two in the seventh, leaving us down by seven. We basically would’ve had to score seven to tie that game or eight to win it, and to score eight is almost impossible because you have to get all eight of your stones in the house without them taking any of them out which is almost impossible to do. They ended up winning that game 9-6.”

Rhinelander had no room for error. Rhinelander and La Crosse played the second game of their series on Sunday, March 23.

“On Sunday, we had our second game — win and stay in or lose and go home,” Louis said. “To start that second game, they scored four points in the first end, which was not good for us. We did make a pretty quick comeback by scoring three in the second and one in the third.”

The second game was tied at 4-4 when La Crosse scored a couple of points.

“We’re tied 4-4 after the third, but then a big turning point was they scored five in the sixth end, putting us down by four which was a gut punch,” Louis said. “We quickly answered with three, leaving us down by one so we went into the final and eighth end being down by one.”

Rhinelander had one more throw to try and tie or win the game. 

“At that moment towards the very end of that last end, La Crosse had two rocks in the house basically, and we needed one,” Louis said. “We need to get one in there at least to tie and go to an extra end, and we got it in there. That was huge for us, went to an extra end, basically overtime, and we ended up winning by one in overtime, which was just elating. Just knowing what’s at stake and just knowing that you’ve come close, we’ve come from behind and come from behind again. To take that one in the extra end … that was a huge win for us. Even if we didn’t end up making it to the Nationals, the fact that we came back and beat them like that was huge for us.”

It all came down to the third and final game. Once again, it was close, tied at three apiece.

“Our big turning point for the first time is we ended up with a significant lead for the first time that whole weekend,” Louis said. “We ended up score three in the fifth and one more in the sixth, putting us up by four after six ends. We got two ends left. La Crosse answers back with two more. They’re down by two going into the final end, but we have the hammer. The hammer’s when you get to throw very last, and that’s always a major advantage because that last stone can always take out theirs. You just have a lot more options when you have the hammer like that. It was really close. It really came down to our very last throw so when you look at it, they’re down by two. They had three rocks in the house, and we had zero so it all came down to this very last throw.”

Louis and Chladil worked together to make sure they made the best possible throw they could make.

“Me and Pete, the skip, we discussed the shot we were gonna make,” Louis said. “‘OK, we’re gonna try to take this one out. We’re gonna give up two points, but we’ll tie it and go to an extra end.’ As he’s walking his way back down to the hack at the other end, I’m kind of looking around, and I’m like, ‘Man, you know what, there’s a lane right over here, and if we take it, and we land it in the house, we seal our win. He just can’t miss this shot.’ We discuss it, and he’s like, ‘You know what, if you think so let’s go for it,’ and he made the shot.”

There was one problem with the shot — it had too much speed.

“As soon as he let go, it was coming in too fast which is a major issue with curling,” Louis said. “Because if you throw it too light, you have two sweepers there that can carry that stone a little farther by sweeping in front of it, but there’s no way for you to slow down a rock. It’s impossible. It’s coming through, it hits the house and as soon as it gets crossed the tee line, which is a halfway line in the house, the other team can start sweeping it. The other team starts sweeping like crazy to try to get it out of the house. It ends up sticking, and we end up winning by about three inches is what it came down to. They did end up with one more point which basically they needed two to tie or three to win so we ended up winning it 7-6.”

When all was said and done, Rhinelander had secured their trip to Nationals Oct. 14-19 in Las Vegas.

“(We were) just absolutely pumped about that,” Louis said.

Rhinelander is hoping to continue to get better at their craft between now and then.

“I’m sure me and Joe and hopefully the other guys will meet up at least every couple weeks and go over video,” Louis said. “Luckily, all our stuff was live-streamed and recorded. It’s on YouTube so we’ll be able to rewatch that and critique.”

With the ice coming out of Rhinelander’s Ice Arena soon, Chladil, Louis, Ross and Peterson will have to travel around the state to find ice time.

“Rhinelander Ice Arena is getting ready to take their ice out for the summertime,” Louis said. “Really, we won’t get to curl much at all up until that national tournament because Rhinelander doesn’t put their ice in until mid-October, which means we won’t even get a chance to practice until we get to the Nationals. There are a couple other curling clubs. Wausau puts theirs in, I think, mid-September. We’ll probably try to head down there once or twice. I think Rice Lake also kind of puts their ice in pretty early. We’ll try to travel around the state or wherever we can find ice just to practice.”

In addition, the Rhinelander Curling Club women’s team made it to Nationals. Check out a future edition of the River News for their story.

“This is very exciting for Rhinelander curling in general,” Louis said. “It’s just very exciting and hoping to get more involvement from the community as well. Now that we’re having some success, usually that breeds people wanna come out.”

Brett LaBore may be reached at [email protected] or [email protected].