FWCC Member Profile - Bob Leckron

 

By the time they reach their 55th birthday, most people consider scaling back their recreational activities.  Bob Leckron, on the other hand, took up a sport 15 years ago — at age 55 — that he now considers his primary leisure-time pursuit.

Bob is a semi-retired insurance auditor who lives on the south side of Indianapolis and spends much of his free time on the curling ice in Anderson and Fort Wayne, sharing his new recreational favorite with people a fraction of his age — as well as his fellow septuagenarians.

Curling is that kind of sport — you’re as young as you want to feel.

Bob knew little about curling until 2010, when he watched televised Winter Olympics matches and decided the sport “seemed like something I could do.” He soon joined both Fort Wayne Curling Club and the Circle City Curling Club of Indianapolis, and was taking part in matches almost immediately.

The Fort Wayne Curling Club, where Bob is the longtime vice president, is located in a repurposed Habitat for Humanity ReStore on Wells Street. In addition to playing twice a week, Bob designed and built the club’s scoreboards — mostly using various colors of duct tape. He also plays weekly at the Circle City Curling Club in Anderson, based in a converted heavy-machine shop. It’s familiar territory for Bob, who hails from the nearby Grant County town of Fairmount — also the hometown of movie legend James Dean.

Bob has a background as both a runner and a golfer, but says you need not be — or have been — a superior athlete to excel in or enjoy curling.

“In fact, some of the better players are my age,” he said in a recent interview, noting that special equipment requirements are minimal. “You don’t have to be big, strong, fast, or agile to master the technique of throwing a stone. The adjustments you need to make are figuring out what the ice is doing to the stone and what it will let you do.  I liken it to the short game in golf.

“It’s a vey accessible game,” he continued. “On the ice, I’m with a lot of people my age when I compete. At the same time, our league also has a junior girls’ team whose members’ ages combined don’t equal mine.”

Bob calls himself “a curling evangelist,” who has introduced people to the sport he loves through chance coffee-shop encounters while wearing his curling shirt to instruction at “learn to curl” sessions on the ice at Fort Wayne and Anderson.

“A club’s success depends to a large extent on its members,” he declared. “We fundraise and volunteer when we’re needed.” He noted that club members have themselves done much of the work to adapt buildings to curling use and to maintain the ice.

“Competition and camaraderie,” is how Bob summarized curling’s appeal. "You learn the game and you appreciate both.”