January 26, 2018
Bowdoin Curling leaders: Kylie Best ’19, Thomas Ezquerro ’18, Cole Hamel ’18, Zachary LeBlanc ’20, and Isabella Vakkur ’20
Curling is sometimes referred to as “chess on ice,” according to Cole Hamel ’18, who is co-captain of the Bowdoin Curling team.
While the winter sport might look deceptively simple — players take turns sliding heavy polished granite stones across ice, attempting to get their stones closest to the target — teams win based on strategy as well as skill.
It is that mental component, as well as the “spirit of curling” — its camaraderie and friendly competitiveness — that has helped propel curling into an increasingly popular club sport at Bowdoin.
“You’re not just trying to crush your enemy,” team treasurer Zachary LeBlanc ’20 said. Ezquerro added, “No matter if we win or lose, we’ll be the same team, laughing and joking.”
When Hamel and Ezquerro joined the team four years ago, there were only five players. This year, thanks in part to the duo’s promotion of curling on campus — including more team bonding activities, a stronger social media presence and sharp team jackets — there are twenty-eight players. A little more than half are women.
“For a Bowdoin sport, that it’s co-ed changes the attitude and the mentality,” team secretary Kylie Best ’19 said. “It’s not an aggressive, high-pressure sport.”
There is no advantage to being large or small, being a woman or being a man. And that “accessibility is appealing,” said Isabella Vakkur ’20, the team’s communications director.
Despite most of Bowdoin’s players not having played before coming to college (only Best played in high school), they are a strong competitor on the college curling circuit. The Bangor Daily News recently reported on a weekend curling tournament, or bonspiel, in Belfast, Maine’s only dedicated curling facility.
Harvard, Yale, Bowdoin, MIT, University of Maine, and Unity were some of the eleven teams competing.
Bowdoin was defeated by “a team of experienced curlers largely made up of graduate students from Yale,” the BDN reports. Bowdoin came in second.
But Hamel said the defeat doesn’t rankle. “We may not always win, but we never lose,” he said.
Sharing the spirit of curling
Kylie Best with her French curling teammates
Kylie Best ’18 did not let being abroad stop her curling practice; she joined an intergenerational team in France — all of whom received complimentary Bowdoin Curling t-shirts. In return, Best received a “Curling Club de Lyon” sweater. Bowdoin Curling co-captain Thomas Ezquerro ’18 spent part of the winter break in Buffalo, N.Y., helping the local curling club there get up and running in its new indoor facility. “I felt that this was a great way to give back to a sport that I love so much and also help out my hometown community,” he said. And Zachary LeBlanc ’20 recently advised a friend at Brown University who was inspired by LeBlanc’s social media posts to start a team at his school.
Artlicle originally published on Bowdoin News: http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2018/01/bowdoins-curling-team-the-largest-ever-plays-nice/