Mary Riordan, left, and Diane Palme sweep the ice in front of the stone while competing in the Bend Beer Bonspiel at the The Pavilion in Bend on Saturday.(Ryan Brennecke/Bulletin photo)

It was after 10 o’clock on Friday night, the temperature at The Pavilion ice rink hovered a few degrees above freezing, but the Bend Beer Bonspiel was just getting started.

After posing for a tournament photo, all eight teams competing in Bend’s first bonspiel (that’s curlingspeak for tournament) spread out across the ice for their opening matches as a smattering of onlookers circled the glass. Four of the four-player teams were made up of Bend Curling Club members, but the other four drew from more established clubs in San Francisco and Sacramento, California, Klamath Falls and Boise, Idaho.

Curling originated on frozen ponds in Scotland, but these days curling sheets like The Pavilion’s, which is exposed to the elements, are in the minority.

“I would liken it to a football field, in that when it turns muddy, it equalizes the playing field for both teams,” Tom Pietrowski, a Bend Curling Club board member who played on the Compass Juggernauts team, explained before the first match. “That’s what you’re going to see out here tonight, because we don’t know what the ice is going to do. People with a lot of experience, their experience doesn’t necessarily pay dividends.”

Well, that was the idea. Although several skips reported that the ice conditions changed multiple times throughout each match — and the fact that several of their team members had never curled outdoors, the San Francisco-based Team Dias beat the High Desert Hacks, 15-2, in their opening match Friday.

(A quick explanation of the rules: A standard bonspiel match lasts 10 ends, with eight stones thrown by each team per end. The team that completes an end with a stone closest to the button — that is, the bull’s-eye — earns a point. The team also earns a point for each additional stone that lands closer to the button than its opponent’s closest stone. No points are given if neither team finishes the end with a stone in the circular target, which is called the house.)

“Halfway through the match, the frost came in,” Richard Lazarowich, 38 and of San Jose, California, said after the match. “As soon as the winds started, that’s when the frost settled in. It slowed down, the ice slowed down. And you have to throw it (the stone) a lot faster to get it to the same spot as you would earlier.”

Team Dias would go on to win its next two pool-play matches and beat The Sorcerer’s Stone, the Sacramento-area team, in the final Sunday morning. The High Desert Hacks rebounded from their opening loss to win their next two round-robin matches and beat another Bend-based team, the Rock Chucks, in the third-place match.

“A few of our members have been to bonspiels before, and they kind of tell you what to expect,” said Jason Burge, the Bend Curling Club president, who was playing in his first bonspiel as a member of the Rock Chucks. “A lot of the time we have ideas in our head as to what shot we think we can make, but we don’t always execute. But the best of teams, they execute more often than not, so it’s real interesting to see that firsthand. If you made any little mistakes, they were going to exploit it.”

With some exceptions, many of the Bend curlers are still new to the sport. Even Burge, the club president, said he had never tried curling until The Pavilion opened less than two years ago. But the learning curve is fast — both Diane Palme and Mary Riordan of Team Dias said they took up curling four years ago after watching the sport during the 2014 Winter Olympics — and many players said they enjoy watching new clubs come into their own.

“About 10 years ago, a lot of the newer California clubs started,” Lazarowich explained, listing off a number of bonspiels held in California each summer, when there is less competition for ice time. “We travel to each other’s bonspiels, and we found out that Bend is doing something new. One of the motivations is ‘Let’s go and support a new club doing a new bonspiel.’”

Burge said he hopes the Bend event becomes an annual tradition, but for the time being, he was pleased that all four Bend teams finished between third and sixth place.

“For a new club, we’re doing pretty good,” Burge said. “Next time we can win it.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0305, vjacobsen@bendbulletin.com

For more info

Are you interested in trying curling? Visit www.bendice.org/curling for introductory information about the sport, playing schedules and Bend Curling Club news, or call 971-808-CURL.