Curling – the unique sport of hurling 42-pound weights and having teammates sweep the ice to make the weight slide – is coming back to Iowa State.

Curling has not been offered since the spring of 1999. It ended when the intramural directors thought the ice rink was in too poor of a condition to play.

Linda Marticke, program director for ISU intramurals, said the ice was so bad the curling weights wouldn’t head towards the target anymore and would just “turn” because the ice wasn’t smooth enough.

“We decided that the ice was just too dangerous to play on anymore, those weights are heavy and could have hurt someone if they went the wrong direction,” Marticke said.

Garry Greenlee, ISU intramural director, said now seems like a good time to bring back the sport. He said curling has had a lot of publicity from the Olympics and with the new ice rink the ice will be smoother.

The only problem that the directors have been facing is when to schedule the games.

“We have had more hockey teams this year than any other year. Because of this, hockey has pushed broomball scheduling back and that is going to make it hard to schedule curling without running into the end of the year,” Marticke said.

Marticke said to compensate for the time scheduling they are going to shorten the broomball season.

Whereas broomball is usually played until there are only seven champions left, that’s going to change this year.

“We are going to do it a little bit different this year because we don’t have as much time to play. We are going to have 14 champions instead,” Marticke said.

Greenlee said that the students would probably like that better because it would give them better odds of winning a championship and “who wouldn’t love that?”

The tentative start of curling is scheduled for April 30 and May 1.