The game of kubb (which rhymes with ‘tube’) might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Eau Claire.

For UW-Eau Claire junior political science major Sam Milewsky, it wasn’t when he was introduced to the game as a freshman.
“I was hanging out with some guys who lived off campus and they introduced me to this game, and I’d never heard of it,” he said. “I had no idea what it was.”
But that day, he ended up playing it for hours on end.
“This is just a game where, once you play, you’re hooked,” Milewsky said.
And Eau Claire, the official kubb capital of North America since 2011, is a great place to start playing the game, Milewsky said.
That’s why he created the UWEC Kubb Klubb this summer.
He said a lot of people he’s met have no idea what kubb is, and has noticed its presence was missing almost entirely from the Eau Claire campus, though it is played often by Eau Claire locals.
“It just really surprised me how campus is almost a vacuum,” he said. “Kubb just doesn’t exist on campus. But when you go out into the community, you’ll see people playing kubb in backyards and parks.”
So far, about 12 students meet regularly with the Kubb Klubb to play the game.
“People come up and ask ‘What is that?,’” he said. “We invite them to start playing, then they’re hooked.”

For the love of the game

“It’s not a traditional campus club,” Milewsky said. “Basically what we do is we just play kubb. So I’d like to think that the whole campus could technically be in the club.”
He said his main goal is to spread kubb throughout campus.
“We want to introduce Blugolds to the game, teach them the game and eventually let them fall in love with the game, because so many of us have.”
While Kubb Klubb is still an unofficial campus club, Milewsky plans to write up a constitution for it and hopes to achieve official student organization status by the end of the semester.
In the meantime, there are four other projects Milewsky hopes the club can take on, the first of which, already in the works, is to have open kubb games on campus. If students are interested in participating in these games, the club usually gets together once a week to play, Milewsky said.  They announce where they’ll be meeting on their Facebook page: facebook.com/uweckubbklubb
He also hopes to get some tournaments going on campus, which he thinks likely won’t happen until the spring, and to have a team participate in a local tournament over the summer.
Last semester, Milewsky took time off from school for basic training, and when he got back, found time to start playing kubb again.
“One of the things I wanted to do, but never had the time, was to build my own kubb set,” Milewsky said. “So I got back and did it.”
He would like the Kubb Klubb to eventually hold a workshop to teach people how to make their own kubb sets.

From Sweden to Eau Claire

Kubb has been a part of Eau Claire for more than six years. Eric Anderson brought the game with him when he moved to Eau Claire in early 2007.
That summer, he set up the first kubb championship in Eau Claire and 15 teams participated. The next year, the size of the tournament doubled, he said. So he started the U.S. National Kubb Championship.
The game originated in Sweden,  but has spread.
Milewsky said there were 18 Kubb tournaments in the country this year, with 16 in the Midwest, six of which were in Wisconsin.
Anderson said he is excited for the Kubb Klubb to be a part of the Eau Claire campus and he said the U.S. National Kubb Championship is looking forward to being able to help the club promote itself.
“Sam has such a presence on Facebook and Twitter that he’s probably already introduced the game to hundreds of people,” Anderson said. “The club is obviously in great hands with him.”

United by kubb

This sort of bringing people together is what really drew Milewsky’s interest in kubb.
“The motto of the North American Kubb Tournament is ‘Kubb unites people and creates peace on earth,’” Milewsky said. “You can take total strangers and they play a game of kubb and it just really
connects people in a way that you don’t see very often.”
Hannah Effertz was first introduced to the game this summer. Milewsky taught her how to play, she said, and she became hooked.
Effertz, a sophomore social work major, said she enjoys the fact that kubb brings different types together.
Though they knew each other before they began to play kubb together, Effertz is a member of the College Republicans and Milewsky is a member of the College Democrats.
“It’s a fairly simple concept, but it’s really more about the social aspect than the actual game,” she said. “You pretty much just stand there and talk and get to know each other. I’ve met some pretty cool people just playing kubb.”
She’s started to convert some of her friends to the game too, she said.
“It sounds silly, but it’s a lot of fun,” she said. “It’s really relaxing and it’s a good way to know people.”
Milewsky said that’s a typical response to kubb.
“It’s just a simple concept of throwing blocks of wood at other wood, yet it’s so much more than that,” Milewsky said. “It’s really only something you can understand after you play the game.”