You go, curl: Dixon teenager stars on the curling ice

TRIUMPH — For most people, their only brush with curling is watching it on TV every four years during the Winter Olympics.

You know the sport, right? A team takes to the ice and one of the members glides along with handled stone in hand, sending it sliding toward a target while other team members frantically sweep the ice with what looks like a push broom. For some, it’s a bit of a head-scratcher this sport, while others watch with bemused interest.

But for Lily Haws of Dixon, that curious sport has given her a brush with greatness — but she’s not the kind of curler that people are used to seeing on TV.

Haws is an incoming freshman at Dixon High School.

She’s also one of the top teens in the sport.

Lily and her parents, Nicholas and Angela Haws, are members of the Waltham Curling Club in Triumph, a small town a few miles southeast of Mendota in LaSalle County. The Waltham Curling Club is the oldest curling club in Illinois, with a history going back to 1884, and it’s also where Lily honed the skills that would earn her a place on a team whose stone-cold talents would earn them a silver medal. Lily was part of a 18-and-younger girls team that competed in January at the 2025 USA Curling U18 National Championships in Lafayette, Colorado, where they earned a second-place finish.

While it may just look like fun and games to non-curlers, there’s a lot of skill involved. It’s not just simply pushing a stone toward a target: It takes a talent on the ice, a good aim, and an understanding of force and physics to make sure the stone stops just where you want it to, all while helped by teammates with brushes who sweep the ice to reduce the friction and help guide the stone to the house. Teams take turns launching their stones at the same target where they score points, while also trying to knock their opponents’ stones off of the target.

Despite her age, Lilly is actually something of an old pro at curling. Her first time on the ice was six years ago, and through the years she’s continued to work on perfecting her skills.

“I [once] thought it was just a boulder that you pass around to a circle,” Lily said. “I came in one day and watched a bonspiel (a league match) and that’s when I was sort of, ‘Okay, this is cool.’ I wasn’t into it, but I started doing it every Sunday and was like, ‘Okay, this is cooler.’”

As she warmed up to the cool game, she got better and better, eventually competing in nationwide tournaments, which made her love playing “chess on ice” — as some refer to it — even more. “When I went to Nationals, I was like, ‘This is something I want to do for sure.’”

Nicholas and Angela first tried their hand at curling 11 years ago at Waltham, and became members a few years later. Nicholas is the coach of a team of junior members and a member of the club’s board of directors — and the stone doesn’t fall far from the tree. Their youngest daughter, Elizabeth, also enjoys curling.

Over time, Lily got good enough to be a substitute for the club’s adult league play, and when she played alongside them, it gave her an opportunity to learn from their years of experience.

“I’m one of the youngest bonspielers, and it’s really fun,” Lily said. “I get a lot of people who are like, ‘You’re playing?’ I’m like, ‘Uh-huh,’ and they’re like, ‘Wow, you’re really young.’ It feels great.”

Nicholas said one of the things he enjoys most about curling is that he can teach it to someone in 15 or 20 minutes — but that doesn’t mean you can just slide right in and become a pro; that can take years, just like in Lily’s case. She didn’t become a silver-medal winner overnight.

“It’s been pretty fun for us,” Nicholas said. “In the past few years I’ve taken on the job of being the juniors coach, so I got to watch her develop. That’s been real neat. As the kids gain a little bit more sophistication, they learn a little more about it and gain consistency. She’s joined us on the Sunday Night league with the adults, and it’s been fun seeing her come up and curl at the same level as everyone else out there.”

There’s still a lot for Lily to learn, and some of it she’ll be able to pick up when she gets to high school, where she’ll be able to curl up with some good books — on geometry and physics, both subjects that can come in handy on the ice.

“I’ve practiced for a long time and had my thing down, but there are still spots where I tell myself, ‘I need to fix that,’ or tweak something here and there. I’m always fixing stuff,” Lily said. “I like the communication and the strategy. It can be hard, but that’s fun. My favorite part is throwing and trying to get it to where it needs to be. It’s a challenge, but it’s a good challenge. If you’re off by a little bit, it can mess up your whole shot.”

Lily’s skills earned her a spot on the U18 national team fielded by the Midwest Curling Association, also made up of fellow Waltham club member Mae Hagenbuch; Heidi Holt and Rilee Kraft of the Capital Curling Club from Bismarck, North Dakota; and Ella Wendling of Wausau Curling Club in Wausau, Wisconsin. The team was coached by Jim Wendling of Wausau.

National competition began Jan. 9 in Colorado and advanced to the semifinals, which began on Jan. 12. Midwest defeated the Grand National Curling Club of Plainfield, New Jersey 8-4 in the semifinal after getting off to a strong 5-1 advantage after three ends. In the championship round against Team Johnson Curling of St. Paul, Minnesota, Midwest got off to a 0-4 start in the opening end but came to within 4-3 after four. After another four-point run from Johnson in the fifth end, it beat Midwest 9-4 to give Lily and her teammates second place.

Despite coming up short in a quest for gold, the experience of being on a national stage was an unforgettable moment for Lily – that, and exploring the Colorado outdoors as well.

“It was so cool,” she said. “I got to see actual mountains, and I enjoyed that. The club there is big. I liked talking with the other teams because they all came from different places. There was a team from Alaska and from all over the U.S.”

Mom also had fun, seeing her daughter pick up tips and enjoy her time with people who were peers on the ice and in her age group.

“She’s definitely a social butterfly,” Angela said. “Going out to the U18s and curling with a lot of people, and especially those close to her age, was a really good experience for her. They were a good group.”

Back home, the Hawses enjoy competing as a family in bonspiels hosted by their club. They most recently competed at the club’s Mixed Bonspiel on March 7, where they finished runners-up in the competition’s third event play.

“I like having different teammates, but I also like having my family,” Lily said. “Being with other people and talking about curling is neat. My team for U18s was new people; I only knew one of them from this club, but I learned a lot from them.”

The past few years have been an adventure for Lily and her parents, building friendships with fellow curlers from all over the nation and exploring new ways to get better at the game. She keeps a picture from when she was just starting out, where she’s sliding her very first stone across the ice. She looked at it one day not long after bringing home her silver medal and reflected on her journey.

“When I was young, I thought, ‘I’m going to do something good in curling one day,’” Lily said. “Now, younger me would be so proud of me.”

Does curling look like a sport that you want to try? Find Waltham Curling Club on Facebook, go to walthamcurling.org or call the club at 815-538-3420 to get acquainted with the sport, or for more information about the club located in the town of Triumph in La Salle County.