By Jack Schwed
Korey Dropkin began curling when he was a “little man that couldn’t even walk” at Broomstones Curling Club in Wayland, hoping that one day he would compete in the Olympics.
Two decades later, after a nearly five-hour bus ride through the towering evergreens and snowtopped mountains of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, he finally arrived at the entrance to that dream.
At the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Korey Dropkin and his mixed-doubles partner, Cory Thiesse, won six of the nine round-robin games, securing a spot in the semifinals, eventually bringing them to the final game against Sweden, where they fell just short of gold.
In the end, Dropkin left with not only a silver medal but also an experience he said was “everything and more” than he expected.
“One of my big goals and dreams of the week was not just to get on the podium, but to showcase how much I love the sport and how fun and energetic and complicated and strategical and physically demanding the sport of curling is,” he said. “And I think we really accomplished that.”
Record-setting performance
The duo’s performance at this year’s Winter Olympics also set multiple records, including the first mixed-doubles team in curling history to win the first four consecutive games at the Olympics, the first American female to medal in curling, and the first American team to medal in mixed doubles.
Dropkin, a real estate agent who’s lived in Duluth, Minn., for the last 13 years, said that without Broomstones, he would have never become a curler.
“Broomstones is definitely responsible for so much of my career and so much of the tradition of the sport, and why I fell in love with curling in the first place,” he said. “It’s a special place in my heart.”
Rich Collier, president of Broomstones, said Dropkin is the first from the club to medal at the Olympic Games.
“Everyone at the club is just incredibly proud of the accomplishment,” Collier said. “To rise to that level on the world stage is really admirable.”
Broomstones hosted a watch party for the gold medal game, drawing in more than 50 people, from Dropkin’s family friends and those who used to play against him, to those who have never met him. Collier said “the excitement level was quite high” as everyone cheered the team on, decked out in red, white and blue, with American flags in hand.
Collier said he thinks Dropkin’s achievement will inspire the next generation of curlers at Broomstones.
“I’m sure there are a lot of kids that are now coming up through the junior program that are seeing, ‘Oh, wow, that is possible. I’m in the same program that spawned that Olympic medalist’,” he said.
Korey Dropkin said the Olympic Games are “so, so different” from a typical event because of the pressures and stressors that arise from “the weight of the country on your sleeve.” In addition, there are distractions constantly “pulling you left and right,” from prominent figures showing up to people wanting the athletes’ time and attention.
“It’s the biggest beast in the world when it comes to a sporting event, and there’s millions and millions watching,” he said. “You don’t quite understand the magnitude of it until you’re there experiencing it.”
During their game against Canada, one such distraction occurred when Thiesse pointed out to her partner that his mom, Shelley Dropkin, was sitting next to Snoop Dogg, who was wearing a T-shirt and jacket with the players’ faces on them.
Shelley Dropkin said Snoop Dogg’s agent asked her to sit next to him so she could explain the sport of curling to him. As she was talking to him, she also discussed the “humanity” of curling with him, she said.
“There’s no shoving or pushing or being verbally demeaning to people on the ice,” she said. “You may think it or feel a frustration inside, but you don’t publicly do that.
And he said, ‘We need more of this in the world.’ I said, ‘We do.’”
Days later, when the Super Bowl aired live on television, a segment following the halftime performance showed various pictures of Snoop Dogg, including one of him beside her at the curling match.
Keith Dropkin, Korey Dropkin’s dad, said throughout the Olympics he and Shelley received numerous messages from people tuning in to the games, including many who are not curlers but watched the team for their positive energy and enthusiasm.
“It was remarkable that all these messages that we got, they weren’t red, they weren’t blue, they were red, white and blue,” Keith Dropkin said. “Everybody pulled together for a common purpose, which we so desperately need in this country.”
Journaling helped
Amid the chaos of the games, Korey Dropkin found peace writing in a journal, gifted to him by his best friend right before leaving the U.S. for the Olympics.
“‘You spent your whole life chasing this dream,’” Korey said, recalling what his friend told him as he was handed the journal. “‘Before you know it, with a blink of an eye, it’s going to be behind you.’”
The morning after Korey Dropkin and Thiesse lost two consecutive games to Great Britain and South Korea during the round-robin portion of the tournament, he poured out his emotions onto the page. Throughout the rest of the tournament, he said, there were a few paragraphs he kept going back to.
“No matter what happens from here on out, whatever happens these next three games, I knew my parents, my family, were going to be proud of me, whether we made the playoffs or not, whether we were on the podium or finished last place,” Korey Dropkin said, reciting what he wrote in the journal from memory.
Beyond Snoop Dogg putting his arm around his mom, the best part of the entire experience for Korey was his family being there to watch him live out his dreams.
“It was just so special having our family and our friends there,” he said. “We don’t get there by ourselves. It takes a whole village, and I wouldn’t be a curler without my parents, without my brother, and I wouldn’t be able to do this and maintain the household that I have without my fiancé.”
Shelley Dropkin said friends and family from around the world, including around 40 people from Duluth Curling Club, came to the games to cheer on Korey.
‘You can’t fear failure’
Korey said he’s had a sphere of support around him during his highest and lowest points, including being “one rock away” from making the Olympic Trials in 2017 and 2021. In these moments, he said, “you can’t fear failure.”
“It’s really easy to fall into a state of depression and disappointment and frustration and anger,” he said. “But to be able to pull yourself out of that, to stand up, to move forward, to use that as fuel for your fire and a bigger sense of motivation to keep on pressing forward and being resilient … You know, it’s the man in the arena that gets the acknowledgement.”
Korey’s end goal is to professionalize the sport of curling, a movement he is currently leading in the U.S. as the captain of Frontier Curling Club.
Frontier is the United States-based team in the Rock League, the first professional curling league in the world, which is set to begin in April.
Korey’s next step is to decompress and focus on the Rock League, but in four years, he plans to head into the French Alps for another shot at Olympic gold.
“We’ll be back,” he said. “We’ll be back.”
