‘Groom’ed on a game he loves

There is, quite likely, not a single facet of the sport of curling that Bill Groom hasn’t experienced. Athlete, coach, official, administrator, organizer, national level participant – the long-time Sudbury native has seen it all over a lifetime of involvement in the game.

The middle of three children in the family (he has both an older and younger sister), Groom followed, quite naturally, in his father’s footsteps.

“My dad was quite a curler, and he was the one who introduced me to the sport,” he said.

Don Groom attended no less than four different Brier competitions donning the colours of northern Ontario, skipping teams representing the Sudbury Granite Curling Club in 1954 and 1960.

Through his elementary school days at both Elm Street Public School and Alexander Public School, Bill Groom recalled a very different era of curling, at a time when his father made a name for himself that would eventually land him in the Sudbury Sports Hall of Fame.

“At that time, everybody owned their own pair of rocks,” Groom said. “When you went to a bonspiel, you went by train, because you took your own pair of rocks with you.”

Attending Sudbury High, Bill Groom qualified for his first nationals in 1952, reaching the pinnacle in the “Schoolboys Curling” competition, the event that would eventually give way to the Canadian Junior Curling Championships.

“There was far more attraction, way back then, for a person to get involved in curling and much greater opportunity for them to do well,” Groom said.

Heading to the University of Western Ontario for his post-secondary studies, Groom was greeted with something of a skeptical eye within the London curling community. Where northern Ontario and Western Canada had always favoured a hitting game, their southern Ontario and Eastern Canadian counterparts preferred to draw.

Though he admits to never having been coached, at least not in the sense that we would envision curling coaching these days, Groom and teammates were given advice, from time to time, by his father.

Still, the game had evolved a fair bit, even in one generation. “Where I curled with a tuck delivery, my dad – well, he never had much of a delivery at all,” said Groom with a smile.

In 1960, Bill Groom joined his father, brother-in-law Al Armstrong and vice Art Silver at the Brier in Fort William. But the team was no match for the powerful Richardson clan from Saskatchewan.

Ernie Richardson and family were right in the midst of their dynasty, running roughshod over most opponents in winning four of five Brier crowns from 1959 to 1963.

Although Groom would eventually add a berth at the Senior Nationals to his Canadian Championship resume (in 1987, with the Chucker Ross rink), he singled out the Brier as easily the most fun of any elite bonspiel he attended.
“I say that it was the most fun, because curling with my dad was a real treat for me.”

For years, Groom remained active as a curler, right through to some six or seven years ago, when his knees could withstand the crouch in the hack no more.

But life as a curler was only a small part of his dedication to the sport. He is still involved, to this day, as a curling official, having volunteered as a national official at countless events over the years, including World Championships in Hamilton.

Locally, Groom was the general chairman of the committee that bid successfully to obtain the 1983 Labatt’s Brier, organizing a bonspiel that drew rave reviews from curlers, spectators and curling officials alike.

“The fun part was to layout a plan for whatever event you were involved with and see things fall in to place,” said Groom. “I was really fortunate to get very good people involved with different committees.”

Yet peripheral involvement simply isn’t enough, more often than not, for Groom. “I love the sport of curling, but I really enjoy being a competitive person.” That outlet becomes satisfied, to some extent, through coaching.

In 1983, Groom guided the Roger Sauve junior men’s rink to the nationals, making for an incredibly hectic year, with the Brier already set to invade the Sudbury Arena. These days, Groom remains a familiar face within the Sudbury curling community, stopping by the clubs to check out a whole variety of different levels of curling.

Randy Pascal’s local sports history feature appears the first Tuesday of every month in Northern Life.