When New Zealand skip Anton Hood takes on Canada and looks up into the boisterous crowd in the 9,500-seat TD Place on Sunday afternoon, it will be a world apart from the fan support where he comes from.
Asked about attendance figures for New Zealand’s national championship, Hood quips, “maybe 20.”
Seeing New Zealand at a world curling championship conjures up memories of watching the Jamaican bobsleigh team that competed in the 1988 Olympics at Calgary.
They’re classic underdogs, in tough against world curling powers, and they opened with an 8-2 loss to South Korea. They also lost their evening game against the Czech Republic, 8-1. But their enthusiasm about trying to grow the sport in the country of 5.1 million in the South Pacific Ocean is engaging.
The first sheet of indoor ice in New Zealand was built in 2006. There are now 10 sheets in total and a “few hundred” active curlers, many of them playing the more traditional version of the game on natural outdoor ice in the mountains of the Central Otago region.
Considering all that, it’s remarkable that the Kiwis have qualified teams for both the men’s and women’s world championships for the first time. They advanced through the Pan Continental championships in Calgary in 2022.
“It’s huge, not only for our team, but for New Zealand, especially,” said Hood, who previously played in world junior championships in 2019 and 2020 and in the world mixed doubles event in 2021. “We’re hoping that our presence here might help get a bit of growth back home.”
Like just about any other child growing up in the country, Hood, third Ben Smith, second Brett Sargon and lead Hunter Walker began their athletic careers playing rugby.
Hood, Smith and Walker just happened to live in Naseby — the town’s poetic slogan is “two thousand feet above worry level” — where the first rink was built due to interest from outdoor curlers. Sargon is from Auckland, where there is no indoor curling facility.
“We got into it through high school,” Hood said. “I thought it was kind of cool and we just stuck with it. I dropped rugby at 15 or 16 and it was full-time curling after that.”
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Fortunately, the young curlers had a mentor to help guide them in Peter de Boer, who has Scottish roots.
De Boer — no relation to the head coach of the National Hockey League’s Dallas Stars — qualified an upstart New Zealand team for the 2012 world championship in Switzerland, posting a 7-4 record, losing a tie-breaking game in an attempt to advance to the playoffs. Before this year, that was the last time a New Zealand rink had advanced to the worlds.
“I lost two Scottish finals in a row and then I decided I needed to concentrate on work and family and moved to New Zealand with no intention of curling,” De Boer said. “After a few years, somebody called me and asked if I wanted to play, and, within 18 months of that, I was back playing.”
He has since morphed into a coach, tutoring the current team on the finer points of high-level international curling after starting out in the remotest of locales.
“If you can imagine a town with 100 people that has a four-sheet curling rink and a bigger district — 50 kilometres square with a population of 3,000-4,000 — that’s the heartland of curling in New Zealand,” De Boer said. “Ninety per cent of the people connected to curling are from that region, so we’re picking from a pretty small demographic.”
The goal is to generate enough interest and to find partners to build a rink in Auckland, population 1.6 million, which would be a “game changer” because it would open up the sport to so many more.
For now, the challenge for Hood’s team is being exposed to competition that isn’t available inside New Zealand.
“The national championships is three teams that have a smattering of capable curlers and then three or four teams that are enthusiastic, but basically beginners, and the locals come in and have a look,” De Boer said.
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Hood and company trained in Calgary for two weeks before the world championship, and the plan is to return there next September for a full season, when they will work part-time at curling clubs and play regularly in bonspiels throughout Alberta.
As for hopes in the next week?
“We’ve played in some big arenas before, but nothing this huge,” Hood said. “There are no expectations. We’re excited about the opportunity, so there are nerves for us. We’re excited just about the opportunity. We just try to put the work in before the tournament and let the results happen.”
Should they happen to gain a few Canadian fans along the way, so much the better.
“It’s great fun for these lads,” De Boer said. “We’re hoping they will become Canada’s No. 2 team, so the fans get to know them. They’re young lads, they’re enthusiastic, they’re good looking boys, former rugby players and all that.”
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