{"id":6714,"date":"2026-05-05T17:39:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennpaulley.ca\/curling\/?p=6714"},"modified":"2026-05-05T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:46:07","slug":"curling-university-and-the-student-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennpaulley.ca\/curling\/2026\/05\/05\/curling-university-and-the-student-athlete\/","title":{"rendered":"Curling, university, and the student-athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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This article was originally published on the Ontario Curling Council website on 6 August 2016.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Come September many active U18 curlers will make their way to Universities and Colleges across Ontario to begin their university careers as student-athletes. The majority of these student-athletes are already experienced players, many with several seasons of competitive play behind them and looking forward to continuing their pursuit of high-performance play by trying out for their respective school teams. And that is the subject of this post: what to expect from your school\u2019s curling program when you arrive on campus as a freshman student on Labour Day.<\/p>

University curling in Canada is very competitive, and the calibre of play is high. At the university level, teams must consistently shoot in the 80-85% range in order to be successful. This past season, the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks men\u2019s curling team earned the right to represent Canada at the 2017 World University Games in Almaty, Kazakhstan by\u00a0winning the 2016 CIS University Curling Championship\u00a0held in Kelowna, BC this past March, defeating CIS defending champion skip Thomas Scoffin and his Alberta Golden Bears rink 7-4 in the championship final:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks 2015-2016 men\u2019s curling team. Pictured above, from left to right: skip, Aaron Squires; third, Richard Krell; second, Spencer Nuttall; lead, Fraser Reid; alternate, Russell Cuddie; and myself as coach.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\tFor the game, it was the Hawks backend of Squires and Krell who were the difference makers as Krell curled a very impressive 93 percent while Squires shot 89 percent to outperform their counterparts, Scoffin and Karsten Sturmay, who each shot 71 percent.\n\u201cRich is a fantastic shooter,\u201d said Squires of his vice. \u201cHe\u2019s certainly one of the best shooters out there. I know he always has the potential to curl in the nineties and it makes it a lot easier for me. Today, he was phenomenal and you can\u2019t ask for more than that. With our sweepers, they make shots for us as well and it\u2019s a real team effort.\u201d\nThe win puts the finishing touches on what has been an incredible season for the Golden Hawks. As a rink, Laurier posted a 20-2 record in the three competitions they competed in and outscored their opponents 169-65, scoring an average of 7.6 points per game while allowing less than three points per game.\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLaurier University Athletics<\/cite>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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This was the WLU men\u2019s third consecutive Canadian Intercollegiate Sport (CIS) (now USports) finals. A bronze medal in 2014 was followed by a silver in 2015, where the men as a team shot 84% in the championship game \u2013 and lost, to the same Alberta Golden Bears.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Some things to expect at university<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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As a freshman student-athlete, one of the first things that you\u2019ll notice at university is the selection of the coach. While there are exceptions, for the most part in this country U18 players are coached by one of the parents of the players on the team. Often the selection of a coach is an after-thought; only after the team is formed is any thought given to finding a coach. At university, in contrast, the coach has already been hired by the Athletics department, and it\u2019s the players who have to be selected at tryouts each year.<\/p>

That leads to the next significant difference \u2013 your teammates. The job of the school\u2019s coaching staff is to select the best team of players amongst those available, and so it should be no surprise that the calibre of university curling is higher than that in U18 or U21 play. While the pool of players is slightly smaller, there are many quality players who, simply because of the number of available positions, cannot be selected to the team. At Laurier, we have, unfortunately, had to cut former provincial champions from the team\u2019s final roster simply because there were too many qualified athletes.<\/p>

It should also not be a surprise that a substantial number of the players selected for a university\u2019s curling roster are skips. As an example, for the 2015-2016 season when I was head coach at Wilfrid Laurier, 13 of our 20 players had skip experience\u00a0at the provincial level<\/strong>\u00a0(bantam, junior, women\u2019s, men\u2019s, or mixed) in at least one age category. Consequently, the reader should realize that while your playing experience at U18 is invaluable, making the team at university is often based on your ability \u2013 and willingness \u2013 to be able to play a different position than the one to which you are accustomed. To the point, your sweeping ability may well determine whether or not you make the roster, even if you\u2019ve been a skip throughout your years in high school.<\/p>

In Ontario, university varsity athletics within Canadian Inter-University Sport (CIS) is governed by Ontario University Athletics, or the OUA. In addition to regulating inter-university varsity sport competition, the OUA also regulates things such as athlete eligibility, which can be made more strict, depending on the institution. Student funding, for example, is one of these. At some universities, such as Wilfrid Laurier or Brock, curling is a full-fledged varsity sport and enjoys the status and funding of other varsity sports within their respective university. At other schools, curling is a non-funded \u201cclub\u201d sport where the athletes themselves are responsible for finding monies for uniforms, practice ice, membership fees, equipment, coaching expenses, competition fees and travel expenses, and these fees can be substantial in any given year. Some schools offer athletic scholarships to help defray these costs, and assist in recruiting, but in Canada athletic scholarship amounts are restricted: OUA athletes can hold at most $4,000.00 in athletic scholarships in any one year, and student-athletes must meet specific academic thresholds in order to be eligible for them. For example, at Wilfird Laurier, an incoming freshman student must have a Grade 12 average of at least 80% in order to qualify for any athletic scholarships in their first year. This $4,000.00 is a\u00a0maximum<\/strong>; by and large, varsity athletes receive substantially more in athletic scholarship dollars than players on the \u201cjunior varsity\u201d development squad.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The tryout process<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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In general, universities support an open tryout process for varsity sports. While \u201cwalk-ons\u201d are supported, prospective student-athletes should have proactively filled out a \u201crecruiting form\u201d for each school to which they have applied so that the head coach at each institution can contact them concerning tryout-dates and other particulars.<\/p>

Each university has its own particular tryout process, which is influenced by the number of athletes in the program, the status of the program within the university, and the availability of ice. Complications inevitably arise due to academic conflicts, as programs may have between 30 and 50 athletes at tryouts, and the freshman and returning student-athletes\u2019 academic schedules will prevent 100% attendance at any tryout practice or meeting.<\/p>

At Wilfrid Laurier, our tryout process last season included four on-ice evaluations during the evenings over two successive weeks, in addition to off-ice meetings and multiple sessions of fitness assessment at two different gymnasiums. Similarly with other universities, at Laurier several factors are taken into consideration when selecting the men\u2019s and women\u2019s varsity and junior varsity teams. Factors considered by the Laurier coaching staff in team selection include, but are not limited to:<\/p>