Sean O'Neill is throwing the rock, as they say in curling. He sends the stone roaring down the ice at the Cape Cod Curling Club, with just enough speed to come to a stop at the other end, on a target known as the house.
He first tried curling at the Falmouth club just four years ago. Now, at 39, the Sandwich resident is headed to the Paralympic Games in Milan Cortina. Events start today, and the opening ceremony is Friday.
“It does feel like a crazy ride. I always say … that somewhat speaks to the need for more wheelchair curlers, more accessible curling clubs, more people getting into the sport,” he said.
O’Neill is modest, but making the Paralympic team is a monumental task.
Curlers have to collect points at world championship events over a three-year period.
He says wheelchair curling is similar to the version played standing up, but without the sweeping.
“We aim at a broom, so there are brooms on the ice in wheelchair curling, but we do not sweep while the stone is in motion,” he said. “Which, we would say, makes us more accurate and more precise because we do not have the sweepers to help our shots along.”
A four-person team throws eight stones, aiming to get as close as possible to the button — the center of the house.
O’Neill demonstrates on the Cape Cod ice in Falmouth.
“So I start with the stone on the center line … sort of at the same distance from that line, which is called the hog line, every time,” he said. “And that's to try and ensure that we're coming out at the same angle, relatively.”
Instead of crouching to launch the stone, wheelchair curlers use a stick.
“I roll up to the stone, address the stone,” — here he pauses slightly and says, “hello stone,” — “then place my stick on the stone. I push it out. We use different heads that give the correct rotation to the stone, or a consistent rotation to the stone.”
They play eight rounds.
They score a point if their team’s stone is the closest to the button, plus another point for each stone closer than their opponent.
“Confirm that I'm lined up correctly. Deep breath. And throw,” he said, extending his arm and the stick to set the stone in motion. :That is how we throw the stone.”
O’Neill got into curling after the last Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing. He went to an open house at the Cape Cod Curling Club specifically geared toward wheelchair athletes.
The club has actively encouraged wheelchair curling over the last two decades, in line with the vision of former president Tony Colacchio.
It’s paying off: O’Neill is the club’s fourth Paralympian, says Matina Heisler, who leads the club today.
“One of the really terrific things here at the curling club is that we have so many wheelchair curlers just integrated into our regular leagues,” she said.
By simply not being the person who does the sweeping, a curler in a wheelchair can play on teams with players who stand.
O’Neill plays on a local team with Doug Jones. They’ve known each other a long time, since Jones taught him math and Latin — and was his basketball coach — at Falmouth Academy.
“He certainly was one of our three-sport athletes that was a star in all three. But basketball was his real love, and that's where he was really exceptional,” Jones said.
Life took a turn for O’Neill when he was in a car accident in college. Surgery for an aortic dissection saved his life but cost him the use of his legs.
He finished college, went to Harvard Law School, and practices law today.
But he’d been looking to bring athletics back into his life, says his teacher-turned-teammate.
“The curling allowed him to have the kind of success that he could do physically,” he said. “And seeing that kind of development and growth, seeing him become the happy, productive person that he had been before, was really, really heartwarming.”
O’Neill will never forget hearing his name called at the final Paralympics selection camp in Madison, Wisconsin, the week before Thanksgiving.
“It was one of those moments, like, you can't really hear anything; you kind of black out for a second. And then hearing who would become my teammates’ names was also incredibly emotional,” he said. “And then, that was balanced against, you know, my other friends who didn't make the team. … It was very emotional overall.”
The “spirit of curling” is a term for the sport’s longstanding ethical code. Players call fouls on themselves and put fairness ahead of winning. That’s been tested in recent weeks, as the Swedish Olympic team claimed uncalled violations by a Canadian player.
But World Curling official Jiří Snítil says curling still holds fast to the spirit of the game — especially when wheelchair players take the ice.
“You curl within those unwritten rules, and it's super unique,” he said. “And to highlight wheelchair curling, their spirit is even higher than able-bodied spirit. So they're friendly, they really treat each other in a fair way and … they are real ambassadors of the sport.”
Back at the club, O’Neill is packing up his gear and thinking about his team’s first match. They play Saturday against China, the No. 1-ranked team heading into the Games.
“It's going to be fun the whole way,” he said, “and we'll see what happens.”
