The Neighborhood Curling Team

From left, Chris Plys, Jeff Isaacson and Jason Smith of the U.S. men's curling team on Friday, when Plys led the struggling squad past France.

By JOHN BRANCH
NYT

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — From the house on 13th Street where John Shuster grew up, along one edge of Chisholm, Minn., it was only a few blocks to where Jason Smith lived. And if you headed out of town a ways, out toward Biwabik, you would find the house of Jeff Isaacson.

Just like that, you would have most of what became the 2010 United States men’s Olympic curling team. There may be no team at the Vancouver Games any closer — quite literally.

For most of the past year, the three longtime friends and core members lived together in a two-bedroom Duluth apartment — with Shuster’s remarkably accommodating fiancée — in northern Minnesota.

“Jeff and I have bunk beds,” Smith said. And because you were going to ask, Smith sleeps on top.

If knowing your teammates well is a recipe for success, the Americans should be the best in the world. All five members of the team — four on the ice and one as an alternate — are from Minnesota. But the core is from one sliver north of Duluth. They were born within nine months of one another in 1982 and 1983.

(More here.)