Volunteer of the Year: Larry Barott

Larry Barott was recently awarded USA Curling’s 2025 Volunteer of the Year Award Winner, and while he quietly goes about his business with little fanfare, this award showcases all the little things it takes to keep a tradition such as curling alive in a community. 

Mapleton historian (and curler) Tim Solie has seen the impact made by Barott first hand. “If there's anybody cynical to believe that a person can't make a difference, I hope they look at Larry Barott because the difference that he's made at the Heather Curling club,  Mapleton, southern Minnesota, St Paul when he was an ice maker in the 70s, it's hard to calculate. Really, it's just so impressive how far reaching it is. And we focus a lot on youth, which is rightfully so, because he loves teaching curling, and whether it's coaching a competitive team, or a junior team, or whether it's after school curling, just being present, Phy Ed curling, all that sort of stuff. It's just unbelievable the impact that he's had on our club.”

Olympic Gold medalist John Landsteiner echoed these sentiments about Barott. “I always remember there were a couple banners in the Heather Curling Club that had Kevin Johnson's name on it, Jesse Gates, and then Larry was coach, so I knew he had done some coaching and competitive curling so that I always saw those on the wall along with my uncle's name [that] was up there as a state champion. I knew [Barott] knew his stuff, right? So I admired that. And of course, Larry was in the curling club, what seemed like 24/7 so you know, I would go to after school curling on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, take the bus that dropped off a block away. And he was always there. And when I was younger, him and his wife Carrie and [daughter] Alicia would always be there too. He would pick up kids that, you know, wanted to put  the time in and he would bring him on a team for the league. I probably played with him in league when I was low teens, so he always just takes kids under his arms and helps them learn  in the game. And obviously the school program, right? The Phy Ed program spending a week or two there for the fall semester, and then a week or two in spring semester. Who else has that time commitment to do that, you know? So I think that's a really great thing, just introducing kids to the sport.”

Ever humble, Barott explained his role with the heather curling club in Mapleton, “I’m not on the board, but I go to board meetings. It’s trying to keep the club alive. If there’s a hole or a vacancy, I try to get involved and give my input to try to figure out how we can make it better.” Barott also explained some of his many duties. “Self appointed duties,” Barott laughed. “If there are bonspiels coming up, I usually talk to the who's in charge to see how their numbers are. I hate having odd numbered teams at the beginning of a bonspiel, and many times I'll just put a team together if that helps not make it odd, so it helps the timing, it makes things smoother.” 

And the amount of time that he spends at the club? “Don't ask my wife,” Barott teased before answering,  “During the season. I'm probably here most days. Doesn't mean I'm here every day. I get kids from school who think I work or run the curling club. No, I'm just here helping.  My daughter called this the White House, and when she was in school, she would ask Mom, ‘where's Dad,’ and mom would say ‘at the white house’ and then she knew.”

For decades, Barrett has promoted curling to many local schools. “I’ll volunteer to take on most anybody for a length of time, and I've arranged anywhere from enough players to play a game. A couple times, I've hosted up to 60 and even 90 kids in a session. And then you got to get creative about having activities for kids to do when they're not on the ice. We had a group of kids in the basement, a group of kids upstairs, and then 30 odd kids on the ice, which worked fine. And about every half an hour, 45 minutes, you change position and rotate, and have lunch. Lunch is important. Anything to make it work. 

His reaction from kids first experiencing curling? “They get eager, and the sound level goes up, so then you know for sure they're probably having a good time.

And why does he give so much of his time? “Maybe the instant response to learning,” Barott speculated. He finds it rewarding to teach those who have never played the game. Having grown up around curling, being a volunteer came naturally..”So I would have been four years old when they built the building, and my dad was on the board, and he was here pretty frequently. I probably started playing when I was seven, just the frequency of being here and you watch what your dad did, and he helped. He was exceptionally talented or blessed with the ability to ask anybody that had never played before, ‘would you like to try?’ So that's in me.”

So what was Larry's response to winning this award? “It's kind of awesome,” Barott admits. “Openly, I don't have internet. And the day of the award, my son had a telephone, and he said, ‘you might want to see this.’” Barott learned not only that he was up for the award but that he’d also made a lasting impact on the curling world. “There  was the comments from people that had read this, and they're people from Saint Paul. There's people from Duluth, Wisconsin, the curly world, and all those, all those people and their friendships, all comes back to me”

Having volunteers work with curling rinks is essential to keep the tradition around for the next generation. As Barott explained, “This building was built by largely volunteer help, and if we they didn't do that, we probably wouldn’t have a nice building. We’d probably still be curling outside.”

  For John Landsteiner, who’s seen facilities around the world, he too understands the impact of volunteers like Barott. “Without volunteers, I think the club would cease to exist after a certain amount of time, because, like now, a lot of the membership that is active in the Heather Curling Club are people that are my age. So, you know, I think that's important that we build that basis when we have the kids in there with people like Larry volunteering. I'll say it again. But in summary, without volunteers or Larry, the club might be gone.” 

Having the right person helping makes a big difference, which is what Tim Solie sees in 

Barott. “The amount of volunteer hours that he's dedicated–it’s just astounding. And I think he comes by it naturally because you can get introduced to curling in a lot of different ways: It might be a friend, it might be through work, it might be watching curling nowadays on the Olympics, but a lot of the people in this area came to know curling because of family members. His parents were just like this. I mean, you know that you don't snap your fingers and the ice is made. It takes work, and you have to be involved with board members and vice president, president. I was looking at some old minutes, and in the 50s, his dad was president right about when they built the building, and then right about then they were adding artificial ice. So some really big things. And when I was reading the notes, it said they gave Lawrence (Larry's dad) a standing ovation. That doesn't happen. So I think we're a lot of us. We know the work involved. We know the strategy:  our parents taught us to be involved.  With Larry, he took that to the next level, where just so many hours dedicated to teaching young people how to curl,  teaching adults how to curl, working at the club. His devotion to curling in general, and this devotion to the club, that's just fantastic.”

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