One-On-One With John

In today's episode of "A Pane In The Glass Podcast" I talk with American curler John Benton about curling of course but more importantly about an addiction challenge that came ever so close to ending John's life. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Welcome to another episode of a Pain in the Glass Podcast. This is your host, Bill Shearhart, once again coming to you from my home in Grand Bend, Ontario, Canada, on the shore of one of Canada's Great Lakes. That would be Lake Huron on the ancestral land of the Kettle and Stony Point First Nations. Today's episode is called One-on-One with John, and the John is John Benton, American curler from Plymouth, Minnesota. John started his curling career in 1975 and competed at his first and only U.S. Junior National Championship in 1987. He has competed at the United States Men's Championship ten times his first in 1997. In 1991, Benton qualified for his first Olympic trials but failed to make it to the Games. He would go on to compete in the Olympic trials two more times in 1997 and 2005 before finding success his fourth time in 2009. Benton's team won the 2009 trials, which earned them a spot representing the U.S. at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games as well as the 2009 World Championship, since the trials were also that year's national championship. Benton played as lead on the team, which included John Schuster, Jason Smith, and Jeff Isaacson. Chris Plies joined the team as alternate after the Olympic trials. In April of 2009, Benton's team participated in the Men's World Championship in Moncton, Canada. His team placed fifth with a 7-4 record. At the 2010 Olympics team USA finished 10th with a record of 2-7. After the Olympics, Benton left the team to form his own team. John was hired by NBC Sports to work as a curling analyst during the 2014 Winter Olympics. At the 2017 United States Men's Championship, Benton played second for Todd Burr. Team Burr earned a silver medal, losing to Team John Schuster in the final. An interesting note here: Benton has helped Jared Allen's team of ex-NFL football players turned curlers, both as coach and as alternate. But that was not the impetus to want to talk to John. It was something that he posted on Facebook, which had everything to do with his life, not just as a curler, but his life in general. And that's where we picked up this conversation one-on-one with John Benton. John, welcome to the podcast for starters. It's been a long time coming for me because we've gotten to know one another over the years through curling, obviously, but also in the sharing of ideas about life in general. And you posted something on Facebook a number of weeks ago that I know you weren't trying to impress anybody, but it impressed me because it uh it takes a lot of uh courage, I think, to talk about uh challenges and life's journeys. And so uh tell us about your your journey and your challenges.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah, first first of all, thanks for for doing this. It is it is a long time coming, and uh I miss our chats uh as as life gets busy, uh you know, we we tend to fade away. So so it's nice to connect again with you, Bill. Um as far as my journey goes, uh I'm a recovering alcoholic of now uh coming up on 27 years or just past 27 years. The interesting thing about that, um, there's a lot of people afflicted with addiction in in various sorts, but being a curler and an alcoholic is I don't want to say they go hand in hand, but obviously our sport has had a very social aspect to it, which is great. It became a problem for me, I'll just put it that way. I started curling when I was six, and so I was around the club a lot, and I spent you know a lot of time in juniors, and and I was having success with curling where where I wasn't so much in other sports. And so through my teen years, I you know started getting on you know some pretty decent teams and skipped my own team parallel to that. Obviously, I'm going through my own life. And uh when I got to college, I was a pretty late starter for for you know drinking and partying and those kinds of things compared to my peers. Uh, but when I got to college, it was like I found a new life in drinking and partying. Uh I I became a different person. I was very social and funny, and girls factored into that uh quite a bit as well. So I'm just gonna be very raw about what that looked like. Like it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun, but that started becoming part of my curling life as well, while I was trying to pursue uh competitive success. Um, so late in my junior career as a curler, a lot of the weekend tournaments involved, you know, drinking and hanging out and partying. And and like I said, that in and of itself is not bad. It was just bad for me. And I didn't realize that until I started getting into trouble uh with my drinking. So in my early 20s, playing through men's, still doing a lot of a lot of partying on uh Bond Spiel on tournament weekends and even during play down times. So fast forward, you know, go through about 13 years of drinking. I I accumulated five DUIs here in the United States. You know, I always had someone to blame. I I could always point the finger elsewhere, right? Um, that it was just circumstance and bad luck, and um and I never really had any sort of severe accountability through the first four. But May 8th, 2000, uh, without getting into a lot of detail about what was going on, uh I'll just say that uh I was out late um and uh I was driving and um I was out in kind of uh a rural area and uh uh I was drunk enough that I passed out at the wheel and I drove off the rope uh into the ditch. It was right near an intersection, so I sh I sheared off uh a stop sign that was on a four by four wooden post, and that stop sign uh came through the windshield of the car and it landed on the driver's seat headrest. Now, the only reason that I'm still here today is that I had passed out and I had slumped over to the left. Otherwise, that stop sign would have done its job uh and stopped me in my traps. And that is a is a very clear and ironic sign uh from whatever the powers that be are, that I needed to stop. And so that began the process of recovery for me in uh in May of 2000.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

How much of a role uh did peer pressure play in the social uh socialization aspect of drinking? Did you did you feel you needed to drink to be part of the group?

SPEAKER_00 7:50

I wouldn't really chalk it up to that. I I I would say that it wasn't any more than anyone else or any other thing growing up. There was nothing unique about my circumstance in my peer group. I've come to learn that you know, addiction, alcoholism, there is a genetic piece of this. And uh my mother was an alcoholic, her mother was an alcoholic, there are others uh in my family um who are afflicted. Um what you come to find out is that you know, the alcohol really isn't the problem. And I talk about that quite a bit. And you if you're in the recovery circles, you f you find out that that's generally true, right? Alcohol, drugs, whatever it might be in the addiction are really just a symptom of the main problem. And that's you know, generally an inability to cope with life on life's terms. In a few of my posts that I've that I've put out, and um I talk about this a lot in coaching, and and I deal with this on a daily basis for myself still, is how we as human beings deal with fear and how fear is oftentimes under identified or misidentified as anxiety or other things when it's actually fear, and a lot of people see the word fear and dealing with fear and having fear as a weakness, especially especially for men, that's getting better. Uh, but for me, fear was uh something that might be kind of trivial to someone, might be crippling to me. Um, the the example that I use is uh once I once I got into recovery, I had to deal with a lot of these things, and and like I said, I'm still dealing with it, but it's kind of funny. Um there was a bill that came in the mail, and uh it was for a few hundred dollars. It was kind of uh out of scope for whatever it was for it to be that much money. I knew that it was coming, and I was afraid of what uh my my then wife was going to think about the bill. So I snuck out to the mailbox, extracted it from the mail, and I kept it from her. I I was so afraid of what she was gonna think of me for allowing that bill to get to that point that I deceived her, right? I was being deceitful. And those are the kinds of things that somebody who's afflicted with addiction will do over and over and over again because of you know fears that they have in their life. So so it's a bit irrational.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

You said that uh there was a genetic component. Did the subject of addiction, alcohol addiction, come up within your family?

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Oh yeah. So I I'm I'm the baby of quite a large group of kids. And so by the time that I came along, uh that had surfaced for my mom and and she had gone through treatment and recovery process of her own. I didn't really understand what that was at the time. Um, and I didn't understand really what it was. So it was never discussed directly. It was always just something that I was aware of, you know, and that and that's often the case. There's a lot of shame that uh is attached to uh recovery and addiction. So, you know, it's not uncommon for a family to kind of keep that under wraps even internally.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Well, as I said, when I read your story on Facebook, I I I can't uh I can't say that I I'd understand because I you helped me understand. And I've not been around uh people who have had that kind of challenge. So it was certainly an education for me, and I appreciate you describing that. So from you you talked about your competitive curling career, and you started out as a junior, you went to the Olympics. Let's let's talk about your curling career.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, yes. You know, the interesting piece is that you know, May 8th of 2000 starts that recovery journey, but it also opened a new question for me about okay, you were having some success as a curler when you were young, and you kind of drank it away for lack of a better phrase, uh, over the past 13 years. So what are you gonna do now? Was the question. Are you gonna keep pursuing this? Are you gonna keep putting yourself in this environment where drinking is very prominent and and available and in certain places expected? Is that is that smart for you to do? And the answer that I came up with is well, if my purpose for being there is to pursue a competitive goal, it shouldn't be an issue. It started a new curling journey for me. Is long story short, uh there's a you know, ton of players that you know that that I know that um, you know, have gone through the same process of you know getting on teams, forming teams, being in different positions. Uh through my junior career, I was skipping. I won a junior state championship. But I learned to play all the positions through the the 2000s, uh, early and mid-2000s, it was various different teams with people that I had grown up curling with, curling against. You know, our sports psychologist in 2010 actually was aghast at how often teams change players. He called it speed dating. But that was that was exactly what was happening through the 2000s. But through through all of that, what I came to learn about myself in recovery and as a player is that you know I wanted to have they weren't called systems at the time, but I want I wanted to have structure around what was done. And none of the teams that I had really been on had a ton of structure. We had some coaching, but we didn't have any methodologies or principles that we organized around. And so I started to build it out for myself. And I think ended up, although it wasn't intended, I think it became evident in who I was as a player and what I was doing, because it didn't really matter what position I played on a team, I brought these ideas with me. And because they were principles, they they applied kind of globally rather than being very, you know, only for one type of uh strategy or one type of sweeping or you know, uh one type of tactical scenario for a team, they applied globally. And I think what that what that led to after being at a number of national championships and getting to um a few playoffs here and there and and kind of being at the upper level in the States, you know, I think I became known for that. What ended up happening in in 2009, actually summer of 2008, John Schuster and I had been friends, and he gave me a call and he said, Do you want to do you want to go fishing? Because he knew I was a big avid fisherman. So he came down to the Twin Cities and we went out fishing and having a good time and we were talking curling, and he said, So I'm putting a team together. I think there's gonna be a couple of young guys with myself. I'm looking for somebody to kind of stabilize the front end and kind of be an anchor, if you will, in terms of structure. And he said, I really like the way the way you play the game. Would you would you be interested in playing? I knew John's background. Uh, he'd obviously already been to the Olympics with Pete Fenton. And I said, you know, this absolutely, of course, this is uh a great opportunity. And so we we set out with that team and and I played lead. We really tried to institute some of those principles and structures in a very global way uh with those guys, and we started having some success. Uh, it wasn't until really late in that season that things uh 2009 leading up to the trials that things started to come together. There at the time there was a challenge round that we had to go through to get to the nationals and the trials, and we uh we really played well at that event. So we we got hot at the right time. We go on to the trials, and the trials was I will never forget that event, just every nuance and detail of how that event played out. I don't know that it would be that detailed in my mind if if we hadn't been uh the winner there. It's it's still fresh in my mind today. Uh when you become an Olympian, it's a it's a pretty special thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

When when I work with teams, I eventually say that with you know all the X's and O's and nuts and bolts aside, you have to learn how to play together. And I really like the phrase that you use that John spotted in your persona, that I like the way you play the game. And when a team asks me to come and work with them over a short period of time or a longer period of time, that's basically my criterion is I'm going to watch how you play the game. You can break it down and said all the little nuances, the nuts and bolts and strategy and tactics and all the rest of it. But there's no other team sport because I think the unique size, it's a small team, but then there's four of you that have to learn how to play together. So talk about that a little bit. The journey that uh John and your teammates had. What did you discover about learning how to play together from when you first started when John John asked you to form the team with him, and then you win the trials. Just talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

It's interesting. Uh having uh 16 years of perspective now, looking back on that, I it it's hard for me to talk about it without that 16 years having influence. That experience informed for me about who I who I am now and who I was as a player through that experience and beyond that experience and as a coach is really invaluable because coming to understand how important it was to when you say learn how to play together as a team, right? That's a very commonly used phrase. But what I talk about when I'm coaching juniors especially is you need to learn your teammates, not just how they throw the rock or how they sweep or how your skip calls the game, but but you need to learn them as people because it is a very small unit, and when you think about the uh the entirety of what a four-person curling team does in a season, throw in travel, uh work challenges, school challenges, illness, injury, all of those things, right? We don't have a bench like other sports do. We can't uh immediately just plug in a new player. Yes, some teams carry an alternate, but many teams don't name their alternate until they've already qualified for a championship. It's a very, very unique situation that we find ourselves in in curling. So learning your teammates is really about learning them top to bottom, understanding who they are, how they function, what they like, what they don't like, what their preferences are uh politically, what they like to eat, how they sleep, you know, how they deal with stress uh is probably one of the most important ones. And all in an effort to build trust that you're not gonna violate any of their principles. Back to principles. And that the the example that I use most often with juniors, because we've all been through it. So you're in the sixth end of an eight-end game, it's a close game, maybe you're down one, down two, and you have an opportunity to score a bunch, or you're facing a bunch and your skip is in the hack, about to shoot. Invariably on a team, at some point during the season, you'll be in a situation like this, and one of the sweepers, unable to check their own fear and anxiety about the situation, will say something like, Is that enough broom as their skip is about to throw? That's what I'm talking about. Can I can I understand and learn my skip or whoever it is, can I know them enough to know that it's okay for me to say that at that time? Probably not, right? That's probably not the ideal, but it but it's really learning about and and being able to check yourself and say, I know Bill doesn't like it when I approach him right after he shoots and give him feedback, right? So I need to modify my behavior to fit Bill's operating principles. Am I willing to do that as a teammate? And am I and am I willing to commit to do that no matter what the circumstances? So those are the types of things that through that process with John and that team, I started to understand. Right? Because it was a long after we won, we had an entire year to prepare. So it was a long year with a lot of pressure and a lot of expectations. So, you know, it was like taking, you know, we had only been together for uh a season and a half, basically. So it was like taking that team development process and crushing it into eight months. So a lot of these things popped out all the time. Some we handled well, some we didn't. Um, you know, I know I certainly made a ton of mistakes as a teammate in that scenario. You know, it's pretty scary to think that we went to Vancouver and we finished 10th, but their first five games all went to extra ends and we had the hammer four out of five of those games. That margin can be the difference in what I was just talking about, right? Being able to trust each other under the highest pressure is what what I was really, although I didn't know at the time, what I was really trying to build toward.

SPEAKER_01 22:50

When I do these interviews for the podcast, of course, it's uh it's audio, but right now it's video, and I'm smiling when you use certain words, and I use the T-word a lot. Trust. Like how much trust do you have in yourself, how much trust do you have in your teammates? What you really talked about in terms of communication, I wrap it into what I call a communication protocol. And it's one of the most valuable things a team can have: a written document which describes who says what, whom, where, why, how, and when. Because you mess up on any one of the W's and you've created a distraction, the great killer of performance. And most of the distractions that negatively impact on the performance of a team come from within the team itself. And that's you've nailed it right on money. I want to talk about John. He's been a he's been a guest of mine on two occasions. I have a great deal of respect for John. Uh, he knows how I feel about the way he plays the game. Let's use that phrase again, because it's it seemed to me, and I saw it up close and personal, because of course I was working with Brady Clark's team. And my fondness for the USCA and American curlers goes a long way. I I I living in BC as I did and being close to Seattle, I did a lot of uh clinics and things in Seattle, is where I met Brady. And uh I was with him in Nebraska at the curling trials. And of course, it was a double round robin. So we got to play Schuster twice and lost both times. And I said to John, I said, I don't know if there's another skip on the planet that gets as much out of his or her teammates as you do. Because it doesn't matter uh how uh your teammates are playing, if they're having a great game or they're struggling or whatever, because he exemplifies the most important characteristic as far as I'm concerned. In our sport, especially from a skip, he always is calm. You played with him. So my observation at arm's length, well, was that actually the case with John? Seemed to be.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Yeah, I I would say that's a a skill development thing that John went through in love because yeah, at at the time that we played, sure, calm, but we had a lot of stressful and frustrating scenarios where we he wasn't calm, but I don't think any of us were calm. I I again I think that's a a developmental thing where you you look at it as a player and especially as a skip, and you if you're looking honestly and looking back at how that may have impacted a scenario, and that's what what I for John and a number of skips, but just because I played with John and I've watched John since we played together, is really understanding how he impacts his team and his players. He he understands that it's not for individual shooters out there, that it is a team, and there is momentum, and there are things that he can do specifically, and only him as the skip of the team to uh manage that, uh create momentum. Sometimes it's as simple as making a tough shot, but sometimes it's uh uh enabling another player on the team to be successful in one way or another, right? And he's very good at managing that. Like I I that much I I know for sure, and it's it's a place where I think John has matured where a lot of a lot of great players don't.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

This week, um the uh hockey night in Canada crew that between periods, and and I and I hate it when I can't assign something that I've heard to an individual. I forget which one of the panel, there I was only four of them, Bill. I never heard anybody talk about frustration this way. And it was a former player, and it'll come to me somewhere. And he said, frustration is a wasted emotion. I've never heard frustration framed quite like that. And I just I just jumped off the couch. I said, Yes, you're right. Frustration is a wasted emotion. And you know, it's part of what makes uh elite athletes elite and and and maybe those that have just as much ability, uh not quite so accomplished. And I thought, wow, what a what a what a great way to describe that. Um the journey that a a curling team takes is is interesting and it's always very unique. And this whole thing about learning how to play together, the Randy Furby team, which of course goes you know way, way back, the that's it uh Marcel, Marcel Rock, who was talking with a group of curlers uh at the time, uh said, and I've I know that I've repeated this on the podcast before, he said, you know, we only had one really good curler on the team, and he was talking about Dave, but Dave Nettoy. And and he said, Well, and one of us thought his career was washed up, and of course that was Randy. And and he said, Well, you know, my my front-end partner and I, you know, we're we're we're just you know good club curlers. I think he was being a little bit modest when he said that. But then he paused and he looked over the group. There were there had to be 30 or 40 of our elite young curlers, and he said, but we learned how to play together. And I have never forgotten that. And I don't think curling teams spend enough time in that area. What's it like in the the US right now, as far as curling is concerned, generally speaking? You know, what we we see it from across the border. Um what's it like right now? You came and stole one of our players on us.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

We're really happy. Uh I'm really happy. I I shouldn't say we, I'm not I'm no longer uh working with the USCA uh as a coach. Uh not that I don't participate, but uh I would I was happy to see um Brad come down uh and make that choice because it is to your question, I think it's a really interesting time in the states um because you're seeing a bit of the changing of of the guard, if you will. You know, there there's uh a number of players after the Olympics, obviously, internationally and and here in the States who've announced retirements. Uh John Schuster's team is gonna change. You've got a bunch of young talents, most of it very raw. There's you know, been a lot of good development work that that has happened. Um you know, you you see Danny Casper's team very, very good. You know, it remains to be seen what uh the tab and the girls are are gonna put together, you know, um our top women. I think we're still gonna be very competitive there. But generally, I think we're in a we're in a new cycle of team formation, team building. You know, so somebody in Brad's position, it's a challenge, but it's also a huge opportunity to take a look at who are the people that are going to be the new future and and face uh of USA curling. Um there's uh the the A Bear Junior team, the the Johnson girls junior team, very, very good. A Bear, you know, just won a junior gold, and and um, you know, so there's tons to work with there. Um, but you're talking about really I I think the talent pool is is wider than it has been. I just don't know how deep it is. Um, and that's um that's something that I think is gonna be a challenge for Brad is to to build some long-term depth into our development here.

SPEAKER_01 31:34

Well, you mentioned how how deep it is. The burgeoning countries that have uh jumped to the forefront internationally with great teams. That's the concern that I always have. And I I understand their programs fairly well, I think. And they're they kind of work with one or two teams at a time. Foundation is really not there, and I would I would always like to say to those countries, it's great that you were able to identify some talent and work with them, and with the help of uh perhaps uh coaches from other countries manifest that talent into podium finishes, but it they're not gonna be there forever, and you have to spend more time, I think, in the foundation. So I think that's very wise. And Brad's, of course, well aware of that. Um he'll he'll he'll do a great job. There's no question about that. He Brad Brad is really smart. Uh and when I met Brad as a junior, right, like I'm saying, nobody's ever said that. But he is. He impressed me with his intellect. He knows he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. And and I really appreciate, I've always appreciated that with Brad. U.S. Canada rivalry that has developed, not just in you know, some curling and hockey, but almost in all the sports. Uh, it's almost like we said to the rest of the world, well, you guys have your fun, but we'll we'll we've got something going here in the Americas, so to speak. Right. And of course, uh last night, I hate to bring this up, but Team Canada was able to move forward in the uh the the world uh hockey championship. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

We'll we'll let you have one.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Okay, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Appreciate the last time. Yeah, so uh, you know, through through all of that and all of this discussion, Bill, I I again I really appreciate you reaching out. Um I think if there were a message that I want people to take away from it, first of all, on the recovery end, is um I would be remiss if I I didn't say if you're struggling, there's help, there's a way. Um, and anybody can reach out to me uh if they so choose. Uh you can find me on Facebook. Um, you can reach out to my personal email, jbcurler at gmail. That's a well-known uh Gmail address out there for people in the curling world. But yes, please, please reach out if you're struggling and don't know where to go. Happy to help. Um and then on on the curling side of things, just tying all of this together, I think the biggest thing is, you know, there's there's a phrase in recovery called uh principles before personalities. And I really like that as a fit for curling and and curling teams, right? Um, if you're gonna put a team together, what are the principles that you all agree to that you're gonna form that team around and how you're gonna operate? And those principles need to be held above any personalities uh on the team, regardless of position. Uh, that goes for the coach too, Bill. I I just think that's a really great message for team formation and team operation moving forward, and honestly, a a great message for life.

SPEAKER_01 35:00

Thank you, John, and uh best wishes to you uh in your continued journey because uh I don't know much about alcoholism, but it it never it never actually ends, so to speak. It's always uh you're you're always on on that journey, and uh I have great admiration for you in the way you you've handled it. So thank you for sharing today about that, and of course all those great wise words about curly.

SPEAKER_00 35:30

Well, thank you again, Bill. It's it's a day and time. Uh I'm very blessed uh as anybody in recovery who's still on the planet is uh I get a new a new day every day.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Well, life, the original do-it-yourself project. Well, it goes without saying I want to thank John very much for sharing uh his life's journey as it has unfolded thus far with uh the addiction challenge that he has met face on. The first step in solving a problem is to realize there is one. And what a scary story about that stop find. That certainly was a tap on the shoulder, and John met that challenge and he did very successfully. So again, thank you very much, John. And just to give his email address once again, jbcurler at gmail.com. If uh you have uh that sort of challenge in your life, or you know someone who has, and you think John might be able to help by similar sharing of his experience, he'd be happy to do so. jbcurler at gmail.com. Okay, we have one more episode to go in the month of June until the last episode of the month. And uh it's a special announcement about the podcast, so I'm not gonna say anything more about it at this time. Remember those wise words of that great North American philosopher Charlie Brown. Don't focus too much on things that make you sad because there are so many things that can make you happy. Until next time,