Once a year, American Savings Bank expands its focus beyond loans and deposits when its employees and customers take to the ice to slide stones in the company’s “signature fundraiser.”

Curling anyone?

While the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, is still two years away, the state’s third-largest bank will take over the Ice Palace today for its annual fundraiser, which raised more than $260,000 for different nonprofits during its first three years. This year’s beneficiary will be Kupu, a nonprofit organization founded in 2007 to provide service-learning programs in the conservation, renewable energy, agriculture and sustainability industries. The bank’s goal is to raise $100,000 this year.

The sold-out, invitation-only event features 120-would-be curlers competing in afternoon and evening sessions on six- member teams under the watchful eyes of Olympians Shawn Rojeski and Debbie McCormick. The cost per team was $5,000 and $7,500.

“I think it’s the most accessible Olympic sport you can play,” American Savings CEO Rich Wacker said. “We can sit there and believe we’re just as good as an Olympic athlete when you stop that (sliding) stone right on the house (a target area segmented by four rings). It’s different. It’s got a little bit of the Jamaican bobsled team; it’s the Hawaii Curling Club.”

Wacker, who participates in the event, said support for it has grown since he conceived of the idea in 2012 over dinner with retired Goldman Sachs partner Peter Tomozawa, entrepreneur and former president of the NHL’s New York Islanders Chris Dey, and their wives.

“We thought it would be unique, a lot of fun and something to which a lot of people had no exposure, and that it might be nice to get them to spend time with people from the organizations we are supporting and to get to know the organizations,” Wacker said.

The novelty of curling piqued the interest of Moanalua High School physics teacher Lori Mizue, who is using the sport this year as a teaching tool for her 50 students. They met with the two Olympians in the school library on Wednesday to learn about the physics of curling, and are scheduled to get hands-on experience at the Ice Palace this morning.

“Curling is a real-life example of rotational motion of a rigid body at work,” she said. “There are forces such as torque that help to explain how the stone moves across the ice, but the curling stone is counterintuitive to that because it curls the opposite way with the way it rotates … Any time the student can actually see something concrete in action, it increases their learning exponentially.”

The rules of the sport are fairly simple. Curlers slide stones across the ice toward the four-ring target area called the house. Points are scored for the stones resting closest to the center of the house. Two sweepers with brooms direct the path of the stone as it slides down the ice.

Two Olympic curlers have come each year to help with the event and this year Rojeski and McCormick got the call.

Rojeski, 44, of Chisholm, Minn., is making his second straight appearance at the event. He won a bronze medal in the 2006 Winter Olylmpics in Turin, Italy.

McCormick, 41, of Rio, Wis., is a four-time Olympian who is making her first appearance at the fundraiser. She placed fifth in 1998 in Nagano, Japan; fourth in 2002 in Salt Lake City; 10th in 2010 in Vancouver, Canada; and 10th again in 2014 in Sochi, Russia. She won the gold in the Women’s World Championships in 2003 in Winnipeg, Canada.