By Nora Saks
Photos by Dave Waddell
From our December 2024 issue
In a frigid, bluebird Sunday afternoon last winter, the Lime City and Swan Vegas curling clubs gathered on Chickawaukie Pond, in Rockland, to crack jokes and beers before a “pondspiel” — a play on the term for a curling match, bonspiel. Something that looked approximately like a trophy was glinting on the sideline. The two-foot-tall sheet-metal pyramid topped with a stainless-steel mixing bowl would be awarded to the winner of the 2nd Annual Maine State International Pondspieling World Championship, organizer and Lime City player Matthew Ondra (better known by the nickname, Matty Ice, knit into his beanie) explained. Someone asked if the tournament was indeed taking place that afternoon. “I think so, unless it’s next month,” Ondra replied, “but I feel like we should just do it today.”
Ondra had arrived an hour earlier to smooth the playing surface, known as a “sheet,” with water and a blowtorch and etch circular targets at each end using a board with a screw poking out the bottom tethered to a pin in the circle’s center — a kind of homemade drafting compass. He also screwed in the wooden footholds players would push off from when sliding their “stones” toward the targets. Since the pricey polished-granite stones used on ultrasmooth indoor sheets would scratch and pit on natural ice, Ondra fashioned his own by hammering the bottoms of quart-size stainless-steel mixing bowls into the shallow, concave shapes that facilitate proper spinning, attaching bent-pipe handles wrapped in duct tape, and filling them with concrete. At about 22 pounds apiece, the kitchenware stones weigh roughly half as much as granite ones, and travel more slowly. The 50-foot-long pond sheet, meanwhile, is a little less than half the length of an indoor surface, so when you’re playing, “it’s basically the same effort exerted,” Ondra said.
Not that the folks who showed up that afternoon were overly concerned with technicalities. Or winning for that matter. As veteran curler and Swan Vegas player Meg Carson explained, the losers have to clean the ice, but the winners have to buy a round of beers at the bar later. “My goal is to curl well enough that the other team knows I could beat them, but I still get free beer in the end,” chimed in her husband and teammate, Scott, who is president of the Belfast Curling Club, where members of both clubs also play.
Locally, the idea for pondspiels, which harken to curling’s 16th-century Scottish roots, when teams faced off on frozen lochs, surfaced during the pandemic winter of 2021. The 65-year-old Belfast Curling Club — the state’s only facility dedicated solely to curling — had temporarily shut down. “But a bunch of us still wanted to curl, so I was like, let’s just set up curling outside,” said Ondra, who took up the sport eight years ago. “I used to pole vault, so I love weird sports, and it doesn’t get much kookier than curling.” The first season on the pond, there were no formal teams. The following year, Ondra created the Rockland-based Lime City club and his Belfast Curling Club coach, Justin Sanderson, formed Swanville-based Swan Vegas. The two compete monthly throughout the winter, depending on ice conditions. Inspired by Camden’s quirky U.S. National Toboggan Championships, Ondra also introduced the World Championship game. “Curling is pretty lighthearted, and the pondspiels are even looser — you don’t have to pay or be a member,” Ondra said. “But every once in a while, I like to make it into more of a serious thing.”
In 2022, Matthew Ondra (left) and his curling coach, Justin Sanderson (middle with trophy), founded dueling pond-curling teams. “We’ve always been rivals, like the Jets and the Sharks,” Ondra joked, referring to the gang rivalry in West Side Story.
In curling, two teams of four players take turns sliding 16 stones toward their targets. While a player’s stone spins down the sheet, another player sweeps the ice directly in front of it with a padded broom, warming the ice, reducing friction, and helping the stone travel straighter and farther. The team that delivers a stone closest to the bullseye wins the round. For four hours on Chickawaukie Pond, a mix of seasoned and newbie curlers battled it out over 24 rounds, with Swan Vegas emerging victorious. But as the teams filed off the ice, lugging Ondra’s DIY cement stones to his car and making plans to meet back up at a nearby bar, it was impossible to tell who the champions were.
