EXTRA CREDIT

Sweep

To hear alumni from the 1980s (a golden era for UVM broomball) tell it, the game was great unifier of the student body, first glue of lifelong friendships, and recreational mayhem akin to medieval warfare. It was also the most fun one could possibly have with a common household cleaning implement.

Broomball is alive and well at UVM, though the chances of suffering a mortal wound on the field of play have been significantly reduced.

Change is good, and the changes are many when it comes to broomball on campus. It’s now an indoor game played on predictable ice in the relative warmth of Gutterson. Back in the day, snow willing, broomball was outside on the athletic field between the indoor track and Southwick. The courts were small, lined up side-by-side with a layer of ice over hard-packed snow. Protection was minimal; rules, few. Helmets are now in. High-sticking is out. Today’s standard “broom” is an aluminum rod with a head of “high density polymer” on one end—designed to whack a ball, not clean a floor.

Some UVM alumni, no doubt, will one day sit in their rockers and prattle on about the days when “broomball was played with a broom! A proper broom!” Paul Karney ’88 remembers that students regularly cleared the local hardware and grocery stores of their broom inventories during the season. Sue O’Halloran Rockett ’86 recalls the craft that went into customization. Something like corking a baseball bat, one supposes, some broomballers would wet the bristles, freeze the broom, then apply layer after layer of white athletic tape. “It was like a club,” Rockett says, “and the women were not less savvy about it.”

The passion for the game still runs high in Burlington. Tim Lewis of Campus Rec says broomball is the most popular intramural competition at the University—more than eighty teams participated in last fall’s tournament. Generations were bridged between this modern era of broomball and the old days when alumna Rockett returned for a UVM Reunion, saw the traditional keg trophy in a dark corner of Billings, and noticed that her 1986 off-campus champion team (The Bruisers) was conspicuously absent from the rows of brass plaques. A chain of phone calls got that oversight fixed and also sparked a new life for the trophy, which seems to have fallen into disuse around 1988. No more, the wooden barrel is now prominently displayed in the lobby of the Gucciardi Fitness Center where students can gaze on the names of past champions (Rhumba Girls, Tupper Groundhogs, Noize Boyz …) and dream on the glory of adding a plaque of one’s own.

—Thomas Weaver

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