By Lauren Dorsey, Staff Writer
The Upper Valley Curling Club — which now has more than fifty members — first took shape during a 2006 Olympics watch party in Woodstock. “That year, the U.S. curling team included Pete Fenson, a guy who owned a pizza shop in Bemidji, Minnesota,” club co-founder and Woodstock resident Bob Holt told the Standard last week. “As we were watching, he actually won the bronze medal. We were thinking, ‘Woah, look at this guy, we could do that. We could be in the Olympics.'”
Two decades later, while no members of the local curling club have made it onto the U.S. team, both Bob and his wife Lisa Holt believe their original ambition has achieved something special. “We feel so lucky,” said Lisa Holt. “We found our way into such an incredible community. People, even professional curlers, are so warm and friendly and welcoming. The whole thing tends to be a real hoot.”
The team generally practices once a week, for about two hours each session, roughly the length of one curling game.
Upper Valley Curling Club co-founders Linda and Bob Holt curling in a Belfast, Maine bonspiel. Courtesy of Linda and Bob Holt
Before they begin, however, they first have to prepare the rink’s ice for the sport. “After the Zamboni smooths the ice, you have to sprinkle water down on top of it, creating kind of a pebbled surface,” said Bob Holt. “The pebbles help reduce the friction between the stones and the ice, allowing them to really glide. They also cause the stones to make this distinctive sound as they move, which is why it’s called the roaring game.”
Curling is typically played with teams of four, who work together to slide stones towards a specific target. Once a stone is thrown, team members can then use brooms to sweep the ice in front of it, controlling the stone’s speed and direction. “It’s kind of like chess on ice,” said the club’s president, Todd Allen of White River Junction. “If you’re a geeky, nerdy type, it might appeal to you.”
Even in highly competitive matches, the culture around curling heavily emphasizes good sportsmanship. “It always begins with everybody shaking hands and saying ‘good curling,’ and it always ends with everybody shaking hands and saying ‘good curling,’” said Seely.
Curling is also self-regulating, so there are often no referees at matches. Despite the lack of neutral arbitrators, Allen emphasized that teams prioritize camaraderie over almost everything. “There’s a lot of yelling during curling, you’ll hear things like, ‘sweep, sweep sweep, hard, hard, hard,’ between team members, but you never yell at the other team,” said Allen. “It’s a very social sport, and it’s very genteel. Etiquette on the ice is extremely important.”
Over the course of the club’s life, Lisa and Bob Holt said that members have won a total of three bonspiels, the name for regional curling competitions. “I’m not sure what the origin of the word bonspiel is, but it pretty much means ‘good time’ and that’s what they are,” said Seely. “They’re multi-day events, often starting on Thursday and going through Sunday.”
Perhaps the club’s most memorable win was in 2017. Woodstock Municipal Manager Phil Swanson, Seely, Lisa, and Bob Holt were on a team together at the Maine-iac, an annual bonspiel in Belfast, Maine. “We were just the most unlikely group to ever win. We were by far the underdog team,” said Lisa. “By the last game, pretty much everybody was cheering for us, and then we actually, unbelievably won! I think that was the pinnacle of our curling career.”
At first, the club held practices at Union Arena in Woodstock — Bob Holt and fellow curling club member Bruce Seely, also of Woodstock, were both on the rink’s board, but as their membership continued to grow, they eventually moved practices to the Barwood Arena in Hartford. “We have people coming up from Sunapee to play one night a week, and all the way down from Vershire,” said Lisa Holt. “Being at the intersection of 89 and 91 makes it much easier for everyone to get there.”
Attendees watch an instructor during The Upper Valley Curling Club’s Learn to Curl in October. Of the 24 participants, the Club gained ten new members. Courtesy of Linda and Bob Holt
The club is still open to new members and has made it an annual tradition to host Learn to Curl sessions each fall and winter, where they teach the basics of the sport to anyone who wants to give it a try. “For some people, it’s a bucket list thing, they want to try it once,” said Allen. “Others give it a shot and get completely hooked.” The team’s most recent Learn to Curl was in October, and out of 24 total participants, they gained 10 new members. “The thing is, even as a novice, it’s pretty fun,” said Seely. “It’s really hard to be good, but it’s easy to get started.”
As sports go, curling is also very accessible, and the game can easily adapt to accommodate a wide range of abilities. “It’s really for just about anybody,” said Seely. “We used to have a wheelchair curler, and we would welcome anyone who’s in a wheelchair to join us.”
Members of Upper Valley Curling Club currently span the gamut of experience. “We’ve got curlers that have been curling for 15 years. We’ve got curlers that have been curling for a handful of years, and we got some who started two months ago,” said Allen. The team is open to anyone over 12, and this year has members ranging from their early teens to late 70s.
Club members over 21 nearly always follow each practice with an age-old curling tradition: broom stacking. “After each game, you stack your brooms on the table, you sit down, and the winner buys the losing team a beer,” said Allen. “There’s a common joke in curling, which is, ‘Am I a curler with a drinking problem, or am I a drinker with a curling problem?'”
These days, Bob and Lisa Holt have moved on from their dreams of Olympic glory, but they still have big hopes for what the team can become. “Personally, I’d like to see curling take off to the point where there was interest in having a dedicated curling facility somewhere in Vermont,” said Bob Holt. Although the state has three curling teams, the closest dedicated curling facility is in Nashua, N.H.
“Dedicated curling facilities are where the game is really played at its highest level,” Holt continued. “It’s so hard to play at that level at a hockey rink because of limited ice availability and the poor quality of the ice for curling purposes. I’m really looking forward to the day when somebody decides that we’re already hosting a World Cup race in Killington, so we should have a curling facility there too.”
The Upper Valley Curling Club’s next Learn To Curl will be this Saturday, Jan. 11.