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Try a Carnival event that’s new to you

Two-year-old Amelia enjoys playing Flowerball — by her own rules — on Sunday on Lake Flower’s Pontiac Bay, beside the Ice Palace. Flowerball will return to the site this coming Sunday at 11 a.m. for the second weekend of the Saranac Lake Winter Carnival. (Provided photo — Mark Kurtz)

The Saranac Lake Winter Carnival has so many events that even most locals haven’t experienced them all. Just look at the schedule. Many of the things you see there might seem like niches meant for only a handful of people. And some are just mysterious.

“Have you ever played Flowerball?” a friend of mine asked me at the end of last year’s Carnival.

I hadn’t. I had seen it on the Carnival schedule but didn’t really know what it was. I asked my friend, but he didn’t waste time trying to explain it.

“Just do it next year,” he said.

It just so happened I had a bit of free time Sunday afternoon, so I wandered down to check out the Ice Palace again — worth it every time — and to see what Flowerball is all about.

As it turns out, it’s all about Sam Churco. He brought it to Winter Carnival, he sets it up, and he’s there to tell people how to play, and to play with them while they get the hang of it. He even invented it, along with a group of his friends, while ice fishing here on Lake Flower — hence the name.

In case you hadn’t heard, when you’re standing around on the ice waiting for the fish to bite, it helps to have something else to do. One day, one of Sam’s friends from western New York happened to have a bowling ball in his truck. Conversation ensued, the ball ended up out on the lake with them, and a game was born.

It has echoes of curling, shuffleboard, golf, horseshoes, bowling — each of which was almost certainly invented to cure boredom. So there you go, kids! Boredom isn’t the end of the world. It’s an opportunity to make up your own game!

I can hear the “Yeah, whatever” chorus already.

Anyway, Sam brought Flowerball to Winter Carnival in 2015, three years after it was invented, and it’s been part of the lineup every year since.

Here’s how it works: The course is a shoveled-off strip of ice with a bowl-shaped divot drilled into each end with an auger. Behind each divot, snow is piled and shaped into a curved berm. It’s supposed to be watered and left to freeze to give better rollback from missed rolls, but Sam hadn’t had time to do that for this past Sunday since he had spent the whole day before at the Northern Challenge ice fishing derby in his native Tupper Lake. When it resumes this coming Sunday, he assured me, the berms will be iced.

In front of each divot, a series of three lines is carved across the ice sheet with a chainsaw.

Two people, or two teams, take turns rolling a bowling ball from each end. You don’t use the bowling ball’s holes or lift it up; you just shove it forward, anchoring yourself by putting a foot in your side’s divot.

If you get the ball to land in the divot at the other end, you get 3 points. If the ball instead stops between the two lines closest to the hole, you get 2 points. If it settles between the two lines farther away, that’s 1 point. Around the divot after the lines is zero. So is the area in the middle.

Like in horseshoes, you play to 21. Getting there might take a while, though. I did see a mom from Wilmington nail it on her first try, but the vast majority of my rolls were zeros. I suppose I could blame the berms. They were soft snow, and the ball got stuck in them a lot. When they are iced, the rebounds will be good for more points, no question.

Anyway, that’s the basics. Sam has a big page of rules printed out, but there’s no need to get serious about it for Winter Carnival. 

Flowerball will return this coming Sunday at 11 a.m., on Lake Flower near the Ice Palace. Try it out — or try some other Carnival event you might not have known about before.

You’ll probably be glad you did.

One of the greatest things about the modern Saranac Lake Winter Carnival is that so much of it is homemade — local residents sharing their creativity and sense of fun. In the early days, the Ice Palaces were designed by architects and built by professional construction crews, but for generations now they’ve been made by volunteers. The king and queen long ago were switched from celebrities to locals. The parade floats and costumes are all local. So are the sports, like snow rugby, volleyball, softball and ultimate frisbee. The newer events are in that homegrown, fun spirit, too, such as Flowerball, Arctic Golf and the “Life, Love, & Legends” concert, which echoes 2015’s “Saranac Lake Sings the ’60s.”

There are other winter festivals, but Saranac Lake’s really pulls you into this particular community. The more time you spend with it, the deeper you dive into this unique place. Maybe it freaks some visitors out or makes them feel awkward, but we expect that it makes others want to move here.

We know it makes kids who grow up here want to stay, or at least to bring their friends back to visit.

If only all economic development did that.

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Peter Crowley experienced his first Winter Carnival in 2000, covering it as an Adirondack Daily Enterprise reporter. He has been managing editor of the Enterprise since 2004.

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