EASTON - Ann Hooker scoots along the 146-foot lane of ice, one shoe positioned to glide across the 1 1/2 -inch-thick surface as she pushes herself along with her other foot.
Frantically sweeping with a synthetic broom, she levels a nearly invisible path across barely perceptible pebbles of ice, coaxing a 42-pound block of polished granite - called a "stone" - to move a few extra inches. That is just enough to ease it past a stone an opponent has nosed into the red-zone scoring area that the players call "home."
Face flushed from the chill of the ice, dressed in sweat pants and a lightweight fleece Chesapeake Curling Club jacket, Hooker, 72, recently had cataract surgery and is bent on making up for lost time. In the 22 years since she took up the sport of curling, she has rarely skipped a session on the ice at the club's home base at the Talbot County Community Center - or anywhere else, for that matter.
"I came here to skate one time when the community center first opened, and I discovered curling," says Hooker, a New York native who has lived on the Eastern Shore since 1954. "You know, I haven't been back to skating since."
Hooker is one of 30 active members of a club that formed in 1980. More than two decades later, Chesapeake is one of only two curling clubs in Maryland.
Nationwide, there are 130 clubs, concentrated mostly in northern states such as Wisconsin, where the United States Curling Association is based. In Canada, there are more than 1 million curlers, including professionals whose competitions are frequently seen on television.
In Easton, a founding member of the club had the foresight and the political connections to persuade Talbot recreation officials to set aside space in their community center for a winter sport most people around here had never heard of.
In a classic case of "build it and they will come," the sport has been a fixture at the sprawling complex along U.S. 50 since.
A huge rink that takes up much of the building during the winter is open for public skating and has helped make hockey a mainstay for more than 200 youth league players who now can progress to high school varsity teams in an area where basketball had been the only option at this time of year.
Kirk Thrush, a board member of the Eastern Shore Hockey Association, says that even though the sports are worlds apart in style, curlers are generally open to anyone curious about their game.
"It's kind of like a cult, I guess. ... But I've always been struck by how willing they are to explain the game and just let kids try it out," Thrush said.
Curling, for those who might have missed it during the Winter Olympic Games - it made its debut as a full-fledged medal sport in 1998 - looks something like shuffleboard on ice.
Chesapeake club members say it's more like chess played with finely honed rocks gliding toward a 12-foot-diameter target.
There's a complicated strategy for blocking the goal, and the reverse tactic of knocking the opposing team's stones away from the scoring circle. Even then, it's all finesse. A hard shove would send a stone crashing into the wall.
In this 500-year-old sport that has its roots in Scotland, teams are called rinks, tournaments are known as bonspiels, and periods are something like innings in baseball but they're called ends.
The curling part occurs during the delivery of stones. When a player, using the metal handle attached to the stone, gives it a clockwise twist, the stone arcs, or "curls," to the right. A counterclockwise twist sends it spinning to the left.
The concentration and attention to detail required by the sport keep John DeJong, 66, a retired investment manager from New Jersey, interested. Neither his age nor damage to one of his arms - the result of a bout with polio in his teens - is a hindrance for a club-level curler, he says.
"We had neighbors who were Canadians who got me interested in the sport," says DeJong. "I learned I could play well, and so I've kept at it for about 30 years now."
In addition to curling several nights a week during the season, which runs from November to March, many Chesapeake members play at a new facility in Laurel that is headquarters for their sister club, the Potomac Curling Club. Many curlers travel to out-of-state bonspiels.
Debbie Hayes, who will admit to being "older than you'd think," has been curling since 1975, when she helped found a club in Philadelphia.
"Curling was one reason I wanted to retire here - it was because of this club," Hayes says.
Even though members' annual dues ($250 each) pay for use of the facility, they maintain their ice. They're so particular about the details that they'd almost have to. The ice should be kept at 23 degrees to 24 degrees, colder than the slushier ice preferred for hockey or figure skating.
The fine network of tiny ice pebbles that gives curling much of its nuance is meticulously maintained by members, who spread droplets of 120-degree water across the ice with a Canadian-made device that resembles a modified shower head. And not just any water will do: Curlers prefer distilled water because they say that minerals in local well water change the texture of the ice.
They also maintain the club area, where they often share potluck dinners and where winners buy a few beers for the losers. The walls are decorated with the club logo and a display of buttons and pins that curlers collect at bonspiels.
"There's really a big part of this that's social," says club President Jeanne Henkel, 55, who has been curling since 1983. "It's the game itself that is just plain fun, but it's friendships you build. For me, it's years of memories."