It isn’t every day that an Olympic gold-medal winner comes to town. 

But on Jan. 31, Tyler George (at left, above), a member of the U.S. men’s gold-medal winning curling team at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, stopped by the Norfolk Curling Club as part of his post-Olympics goodwill tour. In beating number one-ranked Sweden, George and his teammates won the first-ever gold medal for the United States. George, who has at least temporarily retired from playing to be an ambassador of the sport for USA Curling, chatted with club members, let people hold his gold medal (heavier than you’d think) and stayed around to watch a film of the final, medal-winning match with club members.

Before the film, Jon Barbagallo (at right, above) joined George on the ice to give State Senator Kevin Witkos a quick lesson on the fine points of the sliding-lunge motion required to deliver a stone across the pebbled surface of the ice. Under the gaze of reporters from the Hartford Courant, the Lakeville Journal, the Republican-American (and Norfolk Now), newbie Witkos gave it a good try, but when the lesson was over, Rachel Barbagallo, Jon’s daughter and a third-generation curler, smoothly and gracefully demonstrated to the onlookers just how it should be done.

Photo by Ruth Melville.