It's an Olympic family affair from curling hotbed Bemidji
as reported by Jay Weiner of the Star Tribune

BEMIDJI, MINN. -- They are sports adages that long to be coined, words of wisdom ripe to be embroidered and hung on a Minnesota kitchen wall.

"The family that sweeps together keeps together."

Or, how about: "The clan that curls together sees the world together."

"Indeed we do!" said Mary Liapis, known as "Nan" to her grandchildren.

Grandma Nan, 73, had to holler above the noise to say she'd love to hear such slogans gain popular appeal. Around her, the Bemidji Curling Club was buzzing with excitement and hors d'oeuvres. Three of their own -- Nan's son, Mike, and two of her granddaughters, Kari and Stacey -- are competing in the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics next month.

Last Thursday night -- over beers, amid cigarette smoke and around a buffet of cold cuts, little weenies and a decorated cake -- 125 admirers, including the mayor and a state senator, gathered to honor the United States women's Olympic curling team. At its core are sisters Kari Erickson and Stacey Liapis.

Kari is 30, blonde, a Bemidji State University graduate, with a cabinet-making husband and 3-year-old son.

Stacey is 27, brown-haired, single, and had the audacity to move to Chicago six years ago, fleeing the cocoon of this city of 11,917, 235 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

Thirty months apart in age, they are as different as taciturn and chatty, as diverse as geologist and police officer, as complementary on ice as pieces of a puzzle that could come together to forge a gold medal.

Erickson and Liapis represent a town where curling stones and brooms go together like kids and diapers. Since 1979, Bemidji has produced 20 national championship teams, their banners hanging from the rafters of the curling club with the clutter and impression as those that dangle from arenas where the Boston Celtics or Montreal Canadiens play.

At this year's U.S. Olympic curling trials, nearly 20 percent of the candidates were from Bemidji. Consider this: 230 students take curling classes at Bemidji High School.

Erickson's team -- named after her because she's the "skip," or leader of the squad -- has two "outsiders": Debbie McCormick, 27, of Madison, Wis., and Ann Swisshelm, 33, of Chicago. But this U.S. team is family-focused, coached by Mike Liapis, 53, Kari's and Stacey's father.

All of the team's travel, administration and sports psychology is handled by Suzanne Liapis, 54, wife, mom, a club curler herself and, for her day job, an accountant for a construction firm.

McCormick and Swisshelm say they are treated like members of the Liapis family. For instance, when they come to train in Bemidji, a cheap motel on Paul Bunyan Drive is out of the question. No, the entire U.S. women's curling team goes first class.

They all stay at Nan's house.

Growing up

It's Suzanne Liapis' fault. She curled first, got her husband into what some call "team golf on ice," and then dragged the kids in, too.

Kari and Stacey began their curling careers as disinterested spectators. They were toddlers who found swinging themselves around the railing at the curling club far more interesting than watching Mom gracefully glide down the ice, balancing herself in a crouched position, pushing a stone toward other stones at the other end of the rink.

I remember being very bored, sleeping and freezing," Stacey Liapis said.

All that changed when they became teenagers. As sisters do, they spatted over clothing, over the bathroom in the morning, over everything.

Suzanne recruited the girls to play, and the rink became a place where the sisters could get along, excel and direct their competitiveness.

By 1988, the sisters entered competitive curling and Dad, who Mom introduced to the game, was the coach. By 1989, they were state junior champs, with two other friends. By 1990, they were junior national champs.

By 1991, their at-home arguing ceased. Why?

"She moved out," said Stacey of her older sister, who lived in a nearby apartment while studying geology at Bemidji State.

As a family, everyone was adjusting. Even Dad.

"He was a good coach, but he forgot he was coaching girls," said Stacey, whose teenage years were particularly rocky for her parents.

When the sisters won their first state title in a rout, Mike thought their team was disrespectful to its opponents. Curling is a sport of etiquette.

"We won, he yelled at us and made us cry," said Stacey.

Remembers the dad: "I've got one in this corner in tears and one in that corner in tears. Things had to change or I was going to get canned."

A dozen years later last December, not fired yet, Mike Liapis saw Team Erickson roll through the U.S. Olympic trials. The team won nine of 10 games, with Kari coolly making her crucial scoring shots and the others shooting well and sweeping effectively.

The trials were held in Ogden, Utah, in the same rink where the Olympic tournament will be held. As usual Grandma Nan was there, scoping out living spaces for the 30 other family members who will come for the Winter Games next month. Suzanne was there, too, but couldn't watch. She tends to leave the rink or close her eyes when her daughters play.

"She was either sleeping or dead at the trials, we couldn't tell which," said Mike Liapis, a Vietnam infantry veteran who works with kids incarcerated at the Northwestern Juvenile Training Center. But sit around the family dining room table with him, and ask him to describe his feelings on the upcoming Winter Olympics and the man can't get an adjective past his larynx. The emotions are too strong. He leaves the table to compose himself.

Average folks

In "The Complete Book of the Winter Olympics," a digest of minutiae, author David Wallechinsky takes the standard shot at curling, writing that it furthers "the International Olympic Committee's movement toward democracy by allowing non-athletes to take part in the Winter Olympics."

Erickson and Stacey Liapis -- Olympic athletes! -- have heard it all.

"I would love to take them out there and give them a little lesson," said Erickson of the game's critics. She frequently plays eight hours of games on a single day of a tournament, pushing curling stones on the ice just right to hit away an opponent's stone or position hers for points. "Each sport has different aspects you need to be more fit in. Ours is flexibility and stamina, and it's mental. I can't let my focus stray at all."

Stacey sweeps a lot, pushing a broom to alter the glide and physics of the rock. Her arms feel like rubber after a long day.

Still, this sport is played by regular folks. Erickson is a swimming instructor at Bemidji Middle School and works part-time at Target. Swisshelm recently left her job in sales at a corrugated packaging company. Stacey Liapis, like McCormick, works at Home Depot. But Liapis, a risk-taker, recently applied to enter the Chicago police academy.

"That's really making Dad happy again," Mike said, sarcastically.

But he knows better than anyone that his daughters lead their own lives. They finished fifth in the world last year. They are Olympic medal contenders heading for the biggest curling show on earth with Dad, Mom, younger brother, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and, of course, Nan along for the ride.

Kari and Stacey prefer it that way. It reduces all the questioning.

"When we come home, instead of having to explain everything that happened, they'll know," said Stacey Liapis. "We can just reminisce."

As families are wont to do.

-- Jay Weiner is at jweiner@startribune.com