HOMEOn January 10 we got the following e-mail from a reader. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we did.
My name is Mrs. Breyen and I teach third grade in Bemidji, Minnesota. Yes, I know a lot about curling. My whole family curls. Next weekend I am going with my husband, Jim, to St. Paul for the State Senior Men's playdown tournament. He is in it but he's only in his early 50's. The National Senior Men's tournament is in Bemidji later this winter. My son is heading for the district men's playoffs this weekend. If his team makes it out of there then they go to the state playdowns. Curling is a unique sport that children, adults, couples, and senior citizens can all do successfully. Most clubs have a youth night, family curling evening, and leagues for women, juniors, men and "old timers." We have rocks that weigh only 10 pounds for the youngest members. It's a great family sport.
But why I really wanted to write you was to tell you that one of my daughters used to curl with this year's USA team. Roberta is my daughter and the rest of the team was Kari Erickson (who was a Liapis before she got married) Stacy Liapis, and Debby Henry and I don't remember her married name but she is the Debby on the US team. Roberta was replace by Ann. Roberta had to give up curling when she graduated from high school and went to the Air Force Academy. She graduated from there and is now a pilot of KC135's (refueling airplanes) and left Sunday for Afghanistan. We just heard from her and she said they are flying a lot. She and her husband are both there for a month and are both refueling pilots. I'll give you a little history. This year's team started curling during their middle school years. Curling had a trial showing during a Winter Olympics and was written about in a major magazine, (maybe Sports Illustrated). They started thinking at that time that with hard work, they might be able to someday go to the Olympics in curling. As high school students, they won Junior Nationals and went to Worlds twice while Roberta was a member. She spent 9 weeks of her senior year curling. She went to Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, (that's where the World championships were held and we went there too!) Washington State, and a week in Las Vegas where they flooded a stage and showed an audience what the sport of curling looked like. She still graduated with over a 4.0 and received an appointment to the Air Force Academy. After high school, Kari graduated from college and teaches swimming part time in Bemidji. She is now married and has a three year old son. Stacy went to Illinois and curled out of a Chicago Club. She went as an alternate with another team to the last winter Olympic in Japan. After having so much fun she convinced her sister to come back and skip so they put their old team together again. They have worked hard for the past two years curling all over the country to get as good as they could before the finals. Their team is curling out of the Illinois Club (Northbrook) but two members are from Bemidji. They chose not to curl out of Bemidji because the Bemidji Club has many young teams and they decided to let all of those teams have a chance to go to Utah.
Our school hopes to have Kari and Stacy come and visit before they leave for their big event. I loved your site. Write back if you have breyen@paulbunyan.net
This page was last edited December 02, 2005.
Pocantico
Hills School
e-mail us at:
thongell@pocanticohills.org