S4 Ep9 - Susan Dunklee
Tom Kelly: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Heartbeat. Today, we have the honor of speaking with World Championship medalist Susan Dunklee. And Susan, thank you so much for joining us. You're in Craftsbury today, right? Oh, yeah. Well, we haven't caught up since you and Clare retired, which is now a couple of seasons ago. Uh, we were proud to have you on Heartbeat as our very first guest back about four seasons ago. And, right now, I imagine at Craftsbury, you're in the throes of winter, right?

Susan Dunklee: [00:00:30] Oh, yeah. We have, big race events happening almost every weekend. A lot of people coming through the door, and all our local kids coming to practice after school every day. It's it's chaos, but it's a lot of fun.

Tom Kelly: [00:00:41] It's a lot of fun for that, that chaos. And do you have snow on the ground? Is it look like winter at Craftsbury?

Susan Dunklee: [00:00:49] You know, we're lucky it's not a hole. It's not deep snow. But we were able to pull off the marathon last weekend, and it looks white out right now. It's actually snowing lightly as I speak right now. So we're doing all right.

Tom Kelly: [00:01:01] Good. Well, we want to catch up with you. And I'm going to call it life in Retirement. But you're anywhere from retired. Uh, you have retired from international competition. But just before we dive into some of the biathlon stuff and the work that you're doing at Craftsbury and also with us biathlon, how has life been for you since you left the grueling, arduous tour and had a little bit more time to spend at home in Vermont?

Susan Dunklee: [00:01:27] Yeah, I've really enjoyed not being an athlete full-time these last couple of years. Um, I think I had pushed my body maybe a 2 or 3 years beyond what I really had full motivation to do really serious training for. And it's it's nice to be able to spend some time at home after so many years on the road and, um, have a little more time for some of my friends back here. Family back here. Um, but yeah, it's different.

Tom Kelly: [00:01:54] What did it take a little bit of time to kind of settle into a new normalcy?

Susan Dunklee: [00:01:59] In some ways. I had a job lined up right when I retired, and that was to be director of running at Craftsbury. And that's a pretty intensive job, especially in the summer season. So I didn't have a whole lot of downtime to process or anything. I just launched into that and it kept me busy and. In some ways, I think it was really good to have something lined up, because I look at some of the other athletes that I was retiring alongside, and I think a lot of a lot of athletes who've been doing this for this long feel lost when they step away and they don't really know how to how to redirect all this really intense focus they used to having towards their sport. Um, but for me, I had I had a purpose and in a, in a job right away. And that was super helpful.

Tom Kelly: [00:02:41] Yeah. Well, a lot of that makes really a lot of sense. And, you know, I guess if you were to give counsel to athletes thinking about retiring at some point, what's the first piece of advice you would give them?

Susan Dunklee: [00:02:53] I think it's totally okay to start preparing for that long before you expect to actually retire. Like doing some career. Um, some courses, some, some. Research into what is out there. Um, if you're trying to pull that all together in just a few months after you make a decision to retire, that's really tough. But you could kind of work towards it slowly over a few years, and there's no reason you shouldn't be doing that in competing at the same time, to be honest.

Tom Kelly: [00:03:22] With a schedule that wasn't punctuated with constant flights overseas and traveling around Europe, have you been able to pursue your hobbies and your personal passions a little bit more than maybe you did in the past?

Susan Dunklee: [00:03:35] Absolutely, yeah. One of my favorite things is gardening, and it's nice to just be here for a whole summer, um, and watch everything grow and take care of it without leaving for a three-week training camp in the middle of July or something like that, you know?

Tom Kelly: [00:03:47] So in central Vermont, what what point are you able to get a garden in in the spring?

Susan Dunklee: [00:03:54] Uh, usually in Memorial Day, you can plant stuff is the last frost date. You can plant some stuff a little bit earlier than that, but.

Tom Kelly: [00:04:02] It's pretty tough. I know for us in Utah it's a little bit later than that. It kind of gets into June a little bit, but, uh, well, it's great to hear that you're enjoying it. And you went about it with a plan. Let's talk about your role at Craftsbury. And as you mentioned, when you did retire from the team and, and went into a different form or different phase of your life, you did have a career lined up at Craftsbury. Tell us a little bit about that and how you evolved to where you are today at Craftsbury.

Susan Dunklee: [00:04:31] Yeah. So Craftsbury is my home ski club. I've been skiing here since I was quite small. Um, but it's a cool sports center because it has all this other stuff going on. It has rowing programs in the summer, it has running programs. It has mountain biking, skiing, biathlon, all that stuff. There was a job opening the running director. My last year of competing that opened up. And that's basically organizing all the running camps that come through here in the summer. There's some for high schoolers and some for adults, um, plus some other race directing sort of stuff. But I was really excited about the idea of being able to stay in my home community here. I love this place. I love having trails nearby. I have a house here. Um, a lot of my friends are nearby. There's a lifestyle that this community embraces that I really like. So yeah, I jumped at the opportunity to to try that and spend a couple of years doing that. Um, it was fun. It was hard. I think camps, hosting camps, in a way, is almost more of a hospitality job than a sports job in some, some regards. Um, and that was fun, and that was cool. But it's also it's just you have to be on a lot of hours of the day. And, um, I learned I learned a ton from doing that. And I think it's going to serve me well going forward. But I'm also excited to get back to biathlon after a bit of a break.

Tom Kelly: [00:05:50] Going back in your own career, how much had you done in running yourself? Be that for training or just pursuing running as a passion when you were younger?

Susan Dunklee: [00:06:00] Yeah, I was a D1 runner in college. Um, I ran at Dartmouth. I was a dual sport athlete, a skier, and a runner in high school. I absolutely loved it. It was more of my sport than skiing was back then. But then, as you know, as an adult, once I became a as an adult, once I became a professional skier. I did a lot of running. I almost did more running then than I did as a college athlete, because we were just doing so much volume of physical training. So I'd go out for like two hour runs in the afternoon just as a recovery after a morning roller ski. Um, so I wasn't necessarily doing all the intensity of running at that point, but I did a lot of volume and spent a lot of time in the mountains on the trails, which was fun.

Tom Kelly: [00:06:41] As you went along in that role over the last couple of years, did you have a little bit of a hankering to get back to snow and get back to biathlon?

Susan Dunklee: [00:06:51] Uh, yeah. I, you know, I'm in an environment where I see a lot of skiers. I eat lunch every day with colleagues and former teammates in the Craftsbury Dining hall, and, I was never fully removed from it. I guess these past couple of years, I've always been in touch with it. But I, I had to focus on my own job description, my own job title, I guess, so I couldn't. I couldn't be embarrassed and, you know, embarrassed myself and at the same way. But. I did miss it. Yeah.

Tom Kelly: [00:07:22] And then how did you end up into this new role?

Susan Dunklee: [00:07:25] Well, we've never really had a director of biathlon at the outdoor center before, but we have a lot of interest in the sport and it's growing. We have a lot of families that are starting to send their kids to our Bill Koch League biathlon practices. We're having more demand for race events. Um, anytime we put on an event, it's extremely well attended. And so there's just this, this, this really obvious need for more programming. And I was excited about that idea. And so I chatted with Judy Geer, who's one of the owners here, about maybe shifting my role a little bit and seeing if I could help out in that regard. Ethan Dreissigacker has done a ton of great work, wwth their junior program the last few years, getting those programs up and going and. There's just a lot more we can do. So I'm excited to to jump in with him and Rick and Mike Gibson, too, and grow things.

Tom Kelly: [00:08:18] You have a number of sport programs at Craftsbury, and I know it's kind of a holistic environment with everyone working together. So how has the leader of the biathlon program do you integrate or engage with the leaders of other sport programs at Craftsbury?

Susan Dunklee: [00:08:35] Well, skiing is a big, big collaborator with us because you can't be in our biathlon programs here unless you're in our ski program. So that is foundational part of this. Skiing is a big part of biathlon. And so our kids programs, all you all you sign up for skiing and then biathlon is an add on that you can choose to do. And so I'm working very closely with Anna Schultz who's coordinating all our kids programs. Um. And even on the GRP level, which is the elite level. We have several athletes, people like Margie Friede, who are. Came in as skiers, but there's possibilities here to try out biathlon. And they have and they enjoyed it. And they've been able to kind of expose themselves more and more to it and try a little bit of racing and finding success with it. And I think it's really it's problematic when we force people to choose to go one route or the other. Um, you need the bottom line is you need to be an excellent skier to be a strong biathlete.

Tom Kelly: [00:09:29] So I want to touch on Margie Freed for just a moment. We had her on the Heartbeat podcast earlier this season. And what a really interesting story. Uh, and really, that's, I would imagine it that's really a big credit to the, the diversity of the programs that you have there at Craftsbury.

Susan Dunklee: [00:09:48] Yeah. I mean, she is an incredible athlete. And, um, it's been it's been fun to see her jump in and, uh, get to try out some racing over in Europe. And, um, she's also been really crushing it on the domestic ski scene for, for cross country. And she's excited about racing in Minneapolis soon. Um, yeah. It's we have we have such good, talented skiers coming through. And just being in a place that has a nice biathlon facility and a nice roller loop here, we can offer biathlon as an opportunity for folks who want to try it.

Tom Kelly: [00:10:25] Yeah. Has Margie qualified for the cross country World Cup in Minneapolis?

Susan Dunklee: [00:10:30] I think so.

Tom Kelly: [00:10:31] That'll be an interesting one to watch. I know we also had Grace Castonguay on the podcast as well, and I both of them are kind of doing double duty actually. Grace probably doing triple duty with collegiate skiing as well. It's just really fun to see that and fun to see athletes moving back and forth. Just kind of to talk a little bit about the transition you've made from being an athlete and having been an athlete for many years and having great success at the international level to make that transition over to coaching, uh, and we'll start at the club level. We'll talk about the elite level in a bit, but at the club level, how was that transition for you going from athlete to coach?

Susan Dunklee: [00:11:12] You know, I think there's a big change that has to happen when you try to go from being an athlete to a coach. And I think to be a really good athlete, you have to be almost selfish in a way. You have to be very focused on your own needs, doing what you need to do to succeed. And as a coach, you have to be very selfless and you have to be very focused on the needs of the people around you that you're trying to help and support. Um, and I, you know, there's a misconception out there that the best athletes make the best coaches. I don't think that's true. I think they can make good coaches, but it's a completely different skill sets. Um, and so I've been trying to keep that in mind going into it. Um, I got a lot of great advice from. Armin and my my former coach and a few other coaches I've talked to too that it's a really good idea if you want to get into coaching to start working with kids and kind of work your way up to elite. Um, it's pretty tough to just jump into elite coaching. You learn a lot from, um, progressing with a with a cohort of young ones, you know, figuring out what works, what doesn't work, uh, how you how you connect with different personality types and so the club system is a really, really good place for me to plug into right now and to learn. And, um, yeah, that's that's the that's the foundation of my job right now is working with our kids programs.

Tom Kelly: [00:12:31] Do you so how what age are kids are you working with at Craftsbury for biathlon?

Susan Dunklee: [00:12:36] We start them nine years old and up. So we have a pretty good cohort right now of u13, U15 athletes. Um, we have a handful of like U17 athletes but not a ton. Hopefully in a few years that'll continue to grow.

Tom Kelly: [00:12:52] There's really a special gratification, though, isn't there, when you're working with a nine year old, a 12 year old, a 14 year old, and really seeing that spark ignite and building that initial passion for the sport?

Susan Dunklee: [00:13:06] Yeah, you know, there's so many life lessons that you can learn from biathlon, and it's cool to use biathlon almost as a laboratory to learn about resilience, to learn about how to keep going after you failed at something. You know, you miss your targets and you don't get frustrated. You don't just give up you. You go back to the process of what you need to do to do well. And you, you keep going. You fight to the finish line. Even if you're having a bad race. There's like all these little life skills that are hidden in this sport.

Tom Kelly: [00:13:34] So you had an opportunity to go over with the IBU Cup to northern Italy earlier in January of this year. How did that experience come about?

Susan Dunklee: [00:13:45] Yeah, I, I know that they are always looking for club coaches to go on those IBU Cup trips to help out. Um, they usually have one staff member who's there throughout the winter, and then they have another set of staff who kind of revolve in and out from from the regional clubs. Um, so I had reached out to Tim Burke to ask if if there might be some opportunities to do that this, this winter. Um, and so that was that was a really cool opportunity for me. I think going over there, I hadn't quite. Um, realized ahead of time just how much. Logistical stuff goes into those weeks for this to happen. Um, yeah, there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and and that trip really helped me appreciate just how much is going on behind the scenes.

Tom Kelly: [00:14:31] Sometimes I imagine that Tim said yes pretty quickly when you called him.

Susan Dunklee: [00:14:36] Yeah, I think I think he was happy to have.

Tom Kelly: [00:14:39] Did did he provide any particular counsel to you before you went over? Did you, you know, get a briefing to get an understanding of what you might be getting into?

Susan Dunklee: [00:14:50] Uh, I get that from Mike Gibson, who is the head IBU Cup point person, basically for, for the winter. He's the guy who's there every week after week after week. So we had a couple calls in the lead up to kind of go over what the daily work schedule will look like and, you know, some of the details.

Tom Kelly: [00:15:07] So I, I read your Instagram post and I recommend all of our listeners go to Susan's Instagram channel and read the posts that she made from Italy and kind of walk us through that. And, and what your realization was, uh, after you had that experience.

Susan Dunklee: [00:15:26] Yeah. You know, it's it's amazing how many pieces. Have to go in together to, to make a good experience and a good race for an athlete. And so many of those pieces are not directly within the athletes control. They're actually all these support staff who are helping out, making sure the skis are ready, making sure, um, there's a good work plan for the staff so that the wax gets picked right, making sure. You get to the venue on time and it's just an incredible amount of work. And I saw that for many, many, many, many years. But I think to actually live on that other side of it for a couple of weeks, to be waking up at five to get out there at 5:30 to prep skis and then missing meals sometimes because literally you're testing skis, testing skis, testing skis, and it's suddenly race time, and then you have such a short turnaround between the two races, the men's and women's races, that you have to be testing skis again. And suddenly it's like late afternoon and you've missed lunch. It's like. Yeah. Those are those are challenging work conditions. And it just it made me realize some of the times when I'd get frustrated with a coach or a wax tech all those years, it's like just giving them a little bit more grace. Like I'm looking back, like I reached out to fit my wax tech and I was like, thank you.

Tom Kelly: [00:16:45] Did you really reach out to fit a after that?

Susan Dunklee: [00:16:47] We were we were chatting a little bit on Instagram. But yeah.

Speaker3: [00:16:50] That is so cool.

Tom Kelly: [00:16:51] That is that is really cool. I assure you that he understood that. So yeah. Uh, do did you actually get into the wax room and prepare skis?

Susan Dunklee: [00:17:01] I was doing a lot of testing. I wasn't doing the actual race wax stuff, but sometimes I'd be helping clean the skis after a race, that sort of stuff.

Tom Kelly: [00:17:09] Yeah. How much? Uh, I'm sure you have that skill set, but how much do you use that, ski preparation skill set?

Susan Dunklee: [00:17:17] It's funny, because when I was in college, I used to do a lot of race waxing for myself. Um, and then I spent all those years in the World Cup and lost track of, like, you know what even the top waxes of the day were? Um, but this is such an interesting time to get back into waxing, because there's been such a huge shift with the no floral thing. Um, everybody in the industry has been scrambling the last year or two to figure out, you know, what methods of waxing we use now that you know the florals are not in the picture. And, um, there's still a lot of experimentation going on, and it's a lot of art. There's a lot of just figuring out what combinations of things, what type of application works best, what type of structure works best, and. It's. Yeah, it's kind of neat to watch that and see that process.

Tom Kelly: [00:18:04] With the athletes that were over there from us. Biathlon on the IBU Cup, were you familiar with most of them or were there some new faces that you were meeting?

Susan Dunklee: [00:18:15] There were some new faces. I think I knew maybe about half of them beforehand.

Tom Kelly: [00:18:20] And I would imagine that everyone knew you. Or did they?

Susan Dunklee: [00:18:23] Yeah, I think so. I mean, I hadn't met everybody in person before, but I think most of them knew at least who I was from from US Biathlon.

Tom Kelly: [00:18:31] Did you have any interesting conversations with them? Did they inquire about your experiences coming up through the ranks?

Susan Dunklee: [00:18:38] Yeah, we had some great conversations sometimes after dinner. Um, one of the things that really shocked me with the whole work plan and stuff and just trying to get skis done and trying to get, um, just the rides and the logistics taken care of is there's not as much time for coaching in those individual one-on-one conversations that you think there would be. Um, and so we really had to find time to carve. Carve out time for that. At one point during while I was over there, I just sent out a text to the group chat and said, hey, if anybody wants to come chat about anything race-related or otherwise, I'm just going to have open office hours for the next hour or so. Stop by because. You know, it can be hard when you just get stuck in the routines of the day-to-day stuff to to make time for those important check-ins. And that's so much of what coaching is about, is just listening to people and and hearing where they're coming from and what their needs are. And, you know, day-to-day what they want to be thinking about.

Tom Kelly: [00:19:36] Did some of them take advantage of that opportunity?

Susan Dunklee: [00:19:40] Yeah, we had some good conversations.

Tom Kelly: [00:19:43] So you had mentioned earlier in regard to your work at Craftsbury that sometimes the role of the coach is actually that of a hospitality manager. And I know that if it's if it's you and Mike on the road on this tour, and I know you weren't going a lot of places, but you were going to a few, I imagine that a big part of that role is travel management.

Susan Dunklee: [00:20:06] Yeah. I mean, we had some unforeseen circumstances come up halfway through the first week and had to switch hotels midweek. And so we're looking up on Google Maps and Airbnb and just trying to find, you know, which hotels are within a 45 minute to an hour commute of where we're staying. And, um, then there's details like, there was a big snowstorm in Martell while we were there and we, you know, do we have chains for the vehicles? If we don't have chains, can we catch a ride with a team that does have chains to be able to get up the road? And, you know, there's just a lot of stuff like that happening too.

Tom Kelly: [00:20:39] For those who may not know those venues, you were in, Martell, and I think reading on, uh, can you give folks a little bit of an idea of where they are in Italy?

Susan Dunklee: [00:20:47] Yeah. So they're in the northern part of Italy, up in the mountains. Um. Both of them are up some pretty especially. Martel is a pretty narrow valley that goes way up, way up high. At the bottom of the valley you have all these apple trees. It's apple country. It's really cool. Um, and then you get up into this narrow valley and then the road just starts doing these crazy switchbacks and the roads get really steep. You keep going and you keep going and you keep going, and then you pop out in this. No more open section of the valley, little higher up where they have some trails, but it's gorgeous. These mountains on all sides is good. Steep snow, sunshine. It's just it's an incredible place and.

Tom Kelly: [00:21:26] You're kind of in what I'll call the Antholz region, or the kind of the what would that be? The northwestern part of the Dolomites.

Susan Dunklee: [00:21:34] Yeah. So renown's maybe an hour and a half from Mont Holts, a little bit west of Antholz, just right on the Austrian border. Martell is a little further south and a little further west. Yeah, it's kind of like central Italy mountains and central northern Italy, I guess, is what I'm going with.

Tom Kelly: [00:21:52] In your career, I know you've traveled a lot of different places, but at least from my perspective, that's about as beautiful as it gets there, isn't it?

Susan Dunklee: [00:22:01] Oh, yeah. Northern Italy was always one of our favorite stops.

Tom Kelly: [00:22:05] No, I love it there. Um, let's talk about the work that you're doing with John Farrow right now with Project X. I know you've got a camp coming up at Craftsbury, but, uh, kind of explore a little bit what your role is there and how you can help the future of biathletes around America.

Susan Dunklee: [00:22:25] Yeah. So we actually … the project I was working on with John actually just wrapped up, we had a couple athletes who were racing the super tours here in the East, so ski athletes pretty fast. Um, there was a super tour in Lake Placid and a super tour in Craftsbury, and they stayed here after the Craftsbury Super Tour for a couple extra days, and we fit in several shooting sessions. And the whole idea of project X is to give, talented skiers an opportunity with no strings attached to just try the sport and see if they like it or not. And I don't know, it's just there's no reason why we shouldn't all get a chance to try biathlon. It's such a sweet sport, you know?

Tom Kelly: [00:23:06] Exactly.

Susan Dunklee: [00:23:08] So I just had a lot of fun. Fun with them and a few of the group skiers. Margie happened to be around, Tim Cunningham was around, and they jumped in with us for a session, too, just to, I don't know, because. Why? Why not? You don't want to miss out on all the fun. So we did some fun relays together and, these these couple skiers, I just we worked on some of the basics of shooting so that if they do decide to try it again or they want to jump in a race sometime, they at least know how to, um. Proper branch procedure. How to use a rifle safely in the range. They know how. What you know natural point of aim is they know how to squeeze the trigger really gently. You know how to follow through all those super, super basic pieces. They just got their first taste of that.

Tom Kelly: [00:23:50] Well, Susan, before we wrap things up with our On Target section, just my quick observation. You seem pretty happy in your role and pretty engaged and giving back to the sport in America. Uh, are you content there? Is this something you want to continue doing for a few more years?

Susan Dunklee: [00:24:07] Yeah, no, I'm really happy. I think I've been very motivated and energized since switching to this new role this past fall. Um, and there's so much more I know at Craftsbury that we want to try to play with next year and see if we can get some, some more programming off the ground and, um, the sport, I mean, there's so much potential to grow the sport, and I just, I honestly think that we are personnel limited pretty much in every club in the country. And just being able to help with that, that problem and see if we can get some more stuff going is pretty exciting.

Tom Kelly: [00:24:38] Well, we appreciate you digging in and helping out. Uh, Susan, we're going to do our little On Target quick Q&A section. And, uh, the first thing I want to learn is, you know, what's one thing that you really miss? Not being on the World Cup tour.

Susan Dunklee: [00:24:53] I missed really days. Those were the best. Like when you, you and your team were all out there together. And I used to love starting the relays and being in that big pack of skiers all together. Um, shooting head to head. It's just. Yeah, something special about it. We'd often get, like, a little American flag tattoos and put them on our face and it was fun.

Tom Kelly: [00:25:16] That's sweet. As you think back on your career, is there any particular relay that really sticks in your mind?

Susan Dunklee: [00:25:22] Uh, probably World Champs 2019. We were in Östersund, Sweden, and the women's team had a most unexpected day where we found ourselves in podium position on the last leg. We were tremendous underdogs and we just had a lot of athletes performing really, really well. And, I mean, we didn't end up holding on to that position, but we still had a darn good race. And it's it's one of those days. I'm just really proud of how every individual did on the team. And. Yeah. It was. That was really cool.

Tom Kelly: [00:25:56] What a great memory. Now, how about one thing that you do not miss being on the World Cup tour?

Susan Dunklee: [00:26:03] Uh, I don't miss living out of a duffel bag for months on end.

Tom Kelly: [00:26:06] It's a skill.

Susan Dunklee: [00:26:08] Yeah, it is a skill I got used to. I had this packing list that went down to the number of pairs of underwear and socks that I would use every fall, so I knew exactly what to bring.

Tom Kelly: [00:26:17] Yeah, wool. Wool is a nice thing there, isn't it?

Susan Dunklee: [00:26:21] Almost all my clothes were wool.

Tom Kelly: [00:26:22] Yeah, beautiful. Um, what's one thing that you've done for fun since retirement that you could not do when you were on the tour?

Susan Dunklee: [00:26:33] One of the things that I've really gotten into that has surprised me a little bit, honestly, has been CrossFit. Um, that's for I hated strength training when I was an athlete. I absolutely hated going to the gym. I did it because I knew knew I had to, and it was good for me and it helped me with my skiing, obviously. So I did it, but never enjoyed it. And then since I've been retired, I found that having a set time where the whole group of people who I know will be there, um, and going to the gym and doing a workout has been just really cool. And the the guy who leads it here just makes everything into games, and it gives me that little competitive outlet that I don't have in my life day to day anymore. And it's … now it’s fun.

Tom Kelly: [00:27:17] Make sure you send a selfie to your old strength coaches.

Susan Dunklee: [00:27:23] Yeah.

Tom Kelly: [00:27:24] Yeah, she's actually in the gym. How about, uh, the best night out near Craftsbury?

Susan Dunklee: [00:27:30] Oh, man. This place, this region is known for really, really good local food. And so there's some really nice restaurants, let's say, down in the Hardwick area that have most almost entirely local food, some of the farms nearby. I think that's one of my favorite things to do is go, go get a good meal.

Tom Kelly: [00:27:50] And last question. Uh, what's something that you took away from learning curling?

Susan Dunklee: [00:27:57] Yeah. Last winter I went to a curling, a Curds and Curling event, which was actually a there's a cheese place a few towns over that that took their test wheels of cheese, like those big heavy wheels and made them into curling stones. and so the only curling I have done has been with big blocks of cheese. But. Yeah, I don't know. It's just. It's just fun. It's. Those community events are such a blast. And, um, it's actually coming up again this Saturday, so I think I'm going to go again.

Tom Kelly: [00:28:25] You gotta do it. You gotta do it. Susan Dunklee, thank you so much for sharing some time with us. We're excited to see what you're pursuing and happy that you're still giving back to the sport that you so love here in America.

Susan Dunklee: [00:28:37] Thanks, Tom.