Masters of the Broom: Babson Grad Students Go Curling
When he came to Babson, Richard Legler MSBA’24 faced a challenge. He needed to convince several of his new classmates to pick up a broom.
Legler is a lifelong aficionado of curling, the curious sport in which stones are slid on ice toward a circular target, their path aided by the brushing of brooms. As he started at Babson, Legler was intent on typical grad-school goals: earning a degree, networking, bettering his career. But he also had another objective, a fun, whimsical notion that he took very seriously. He wanted to form a Babson curling team.
That wouldn’t be easy. Many have only a fleeting knowledge of curling, perhaps catching a glimpse of it every four years at the Olympics. Legler, though, was determined. Just give it a try, he told his new classmates. “I wanted to share it with the Babson community,” Legler says. “I knew that, once people gave it a chance, they would be hooked.”
Sure enough, a Babson team was formed. As its novice members studied the ways of business in the classroom, they also studied the ways of ice, stone, and broom. The team met for regular Friday afternoon practices at a local curling club and took trips to tournaments around the Northeast, from Belfast, Maine, to Utica, N.Y., to Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Legler watched as the newbies grew to become confidant on the ice. “They were able to see rapid improvement—not just practice to practice, but hour by hour,” he says.
Chess on Ice
Growing up in suburban Montreal, Legler started playing curling when he was 10. Both his parents were fans of the game. “My mom played growing up in the middle of nowhere in Northern Quebec,” he says.
Curling may have a passing resemblance to shuffleboard, with a bit of household sweeping thrown in, but Legler says the game is not so simple as it may seem. Much strategy and skill are needed as players try to maneuver their stones onto the target area, known as the house. “People like to say it’s chess on ice,” he says. “There is a lot of mental game.”
Throughout high school, Legler traversed the province of Quebec playing in curling tournaments, but when he went to college at Northwestern, he stepped away from the game and played rugby instead. Curling remained on the backburner after graduation, as he worked for two years as a strategy consultant in New York City.
Coming to Babson, though, he knew he wanted to take up curling again, especially with the Broomstones Curling Club, one of the best curling facilities in the country, so close to campus in Wayland, Massachusetts. “They have some of the best ice,” he says. “It is always consistent.”
At Babson, Legler went to work recruiting classmates to start a team. “I was intrigued when Richard first brought up curling,” recalls Geeth Devara MSBA’24. “It’s not a sport I ever imagined myself playing, but his enthusiasm was contagious.”
Christopher McKay MSBA’24 wasn’t sure what to make of Legler asking him to join a curling team. “At first, I was taken back by the question because he had mentioned it so casually while we sat in one of our classes together,” McKay says. “I joined him at the first practice and was hooked instantly.”
Initially, the Babson team was made up of Legler, Devara, McKay, and Naren Majeti MSBA’24. When Majeti graduated last May, Srilekha Reddy MBA’25 took his place. She was happy to join the team. “I really enjoy how curling is this perfect mix of strategy, precision, and teamwork,” Reddy says.
Curling for Life
Curling may not be a widely popular sport, but Babson is far from the only college with a team. At tournaments (or bonspiels, as they are called in the world of curling), the Babson curlers competed against a host of teams from other schools, such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, Penn, Princeton, Bowdoin, Syracuse, and the U.S. Naval Academy.
The spirit of those curling competitions is friendly, with teams typically socializing, or broomstacking as it’s known in curling parlance, after a match. “Over time, you develop friendships with all these different teams,” Legler says.
In November, the Babson team won a college tournament at Broomstones, defeating MIT in the finals. As the curlers celebrated, Legler thought of how far his teammates had come, from curling beginners to champions. “We were really happy,” Legler says. “We went in for a group hug. I told them how proud I was.”
The victory’s timing was fitting. The next month, three out of the team’s four members graduated, thus bringing an end to the Babson curling team. Legler hopes his teammates keep curling. The game can be a comforting companion for a life’s journey. “Wherever they move to, if they want to keep curling, that to me would be the biggest success,” Legler says.
Having graduated, Legler is now headed to Detroit, where he will be an analytics associate with the Detroit Tigers. Working in baseball has been a long-term goal for Legler, who had interned last summer with the Hyannis Harbor Hawks of the Cape Cod Baseball League. “I have always loved baseball,” he says.
Not that he has forgotten about curling. Legler hopes to find an apartment that’s not too far from Detroit’s curling club. “I have heard good things about it,” he says.
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