Steve Emt was a three-sport athlete at RHAM High School in Hebron. He played basketball at West Point, then came home to end his college career as a walk-on at UConn under coach Jim Calhoun.
Laura Dwyer was also a college athlete, playing volleyball. She played softball in high school in Wisconsin.
Emt was injured in a drunk driving accident in 1995 and became paralyzed. In 2012, Dwyer had a 1,000-pound tree branch fall on her while she was working as a landscaper, causing a spinal cord injury.
They both found their way into wheelchair curling and eventually, to the U.S. Paralympic team, and then to each other, as a team. Emt and Dwyer will compete in mixed doubles, which will be offered for the first time, at the Paralympics in Italy. The Opening Ceremonies are Friday but their first competition is Wednesday.
“We are very similar,” Dwyer said. “We both come from athletic backgrounds. Early on when I first met him, and we didn’t really know each other, we caught on that both of us had this athlete mentality, along with drive and push and we clicked.
“I’m not out there just for fun. Am I going to have fun? Absolutely. But I’m out there to perfect this discipline, in whatever I’m doing, I’m going to work extra hard to make it just right. That’s where we really clicked.”
Emt, 56, is a two-time Paralympic curler. His team finished 12th in 2018 and fifth in the 2022 Games. He and Dwyer, who made the national team in 2022, became a mixed doubles team two years ago and won the national championship last year.
“We doubled down since we got together to learn this new discipline,” Dwyer said. “The strategy is different than the four person team.
“I’m a sponge and I love to learn. He’s the OG who’s been there forever.”
The major difference between wheelchair curling and able-bodied curling is that there is no sweeping.
“You have to be that much more precise and accurate because you don’t have the sweeping as a backup to correct any minor inconsistencies,” said Jon Barbagallo, the ice technician at the Norfolk club who practiced often with Emt, in 2021. “For the wheelchair guys, curling is more difficult than for us able-bodied folk.
“People do enjoy curling with him typically because he shoots better than most of us. No one else practices more hours a week than he does.”
Emt was a walk-on at UConn from 1992-94, playing for the team after returning home from West Point after his father had a heart attack.
In 1995, he was at a bar in Hartford when it was discovered that he had played for the Huskies and drinks were on the house. He passed out while driving his truck about 85 mph on I-84 and crashed. The truck flipped over multiple times. Emt wasn’t wearing a seat belt and was thrown clear of the truck. He broke most of his ribs, his back in three places, had a head injury and massive internal bleeding. The crash severed his spinal cord and he was paralyzed from the waist down.
After his rehabilitation, he was looking for new athletic pursuits. He had played wheelchair basketball and tennis and competed in the New York City Marathon but nothing felt right until he discovered curling.
That was in 2013, when he was pushing his wheelchair up a hill in Woods Hole, Mass. and a volunteer assistant coach for the national wheelchair curling team drove by and saw him and then spent 40 minutes trying to find him.
“I got stalked 12 years ago,” Emt said. “I was just minding my own business. The guy said, ‘Hey, I can make you into an Olympian in a year,’ and I said, ‘Where do I sign up? And what the hell’s curling?’”
Emt, who was a middle school math teacher and coached the RHAM boys basketball team, drove from Connecticut to a curling club in Cape Cod before he decided to do curling full time. He quit his job and spent a lot of time at the Norfolk Curling Club but even that was an 1 1/2 hour drive from where he lived in Hebron.
David Butler II, Special to The Courant
Steve Emt talks to his RHAM basketball players as they take on Farmington during a state tournament game. (Courant file photo)
In 2021, he said that curling made him a better person.
“You go to a basketball game, I’m sitting on the bench, Ray Allen’s running up and down the court, Scott Burrell and Donyell Marshall and Kevin Ollie, in front of 20,000 people and it’s nuts,” he said before the 2022 Games. “Now you’re on the ice all by yourself and it’s you and the stones and the ice. It took me a bit of time to manage my emotions.”
He made the Paralympic team in 2018 but his team finished 12th out of 12. That motivated him to train harder and in 2022, the U.S. team finished fifth.
Because he was spending a lot of time training in Wisconsin, he decided to move there 2 ½ years ago. Dwyer, who is married with two children, lives there and the two practice almost daily.
“About two years ago, we were playing with other teammates and things just weren’t clicking,” he said. “So we broke up with our teammates.
“When you’re out there with three other people, there’s personalities and you got to manage all that. When there’s just two people, two less people, it makes it easier. Laura and I are like twins. She played college (softball) before her accident. She’s very competitive like I am. We’re cut from the same cloth.
“We know we are capable of some great things. We’re going to go to Italy and take care of business.”
Emt, who is a motivational speaker and author, is the oldest Paralympian on the U.S. team.
“I’m not a spring chicken,” he said. “This is my third Games so this makes me the most decorated wheelchair curler in the history of our country.
“Twelve years ago, when I started, I said I wanted to do three Games to get that record but now Utah is hosting in 2034.”
He laughed.
“I got to compete on my own soil. I’ll be like 90 years old.”
