Three sheets of curling ice at the Jasper Activity Centre are abuzz with activity as the young members of the Jasper Junior Curling club call their shots, release their rocks and sweep for their lives. The group is celebrating their last on-ice session of the year with an all-day bonspiel. Six teams consisting of kids from age seven to 16 finish their matches and pour out of the rink, hungry and eager for lunch after a morning of curling. Jill and Robert Scott look on with pride.

The Scotts have been coaching the junior club for the past three years and their group is enjoying a banner season. With more than 30 regular members, the club typically uses all four sheets of available ice during its weekly training session.

“There is just enough space for the kids,” Jill says. “When we first started we had a smaller group, the first year it averaged 15 or 16 kids, but now it’s up quite a bit.”

Besides the healthy numbers, a foursome from the club competed at the zone playdowns for the Alberta Winter Games, where they barely missed qualifying, losing in the deciding game by a single point.

The more advanced young curlers coached by the Scotts and Dee Dee Bartlett are already helping maintain the ranks of the men’s, ladies’ and mixed leagues in town, and Jill Scott hopes that they will continue to do so. 

“That’s how to grow the sport, through the youth,” she says. “There is a missed generation there ... most of the league players are 35 or older, but now it seems like the junior curling is becoming more popular.”

Every week, Scott and her fellow coaches teach the basic skills of the game, from delivery position to weight control. Every member, even the seven-year-olds, throw full-sized stones, 42 pounds of rock all-in-all.

“It takes some strength,” Scott acknowledges. “That’s why we don’t like to start any earlier than seven.”

The finer points of strategy and shot-making are passed on to the older and more experienced curlers of the group, but the younger members are just encouraged to have fun.

“If we’re talking about grade school kids, they just want to get out here and be part of the group,” Scott says.

That group dynamic is one thing that makes curling a great sport for young people, according to Scott.

“It’s a very social game,” she says. “We moved to Jasper seven years ago and that’s why I started curling, to meet people. You develop camaraderie as a team, working together, and it’s not an aggressive sport, which is a positive for some people.”

The kids in the club also get a physical workout from the strenuous sweeping, she adds.

While this year’s bonspiel consists of Jasper curlers only, Scott hopes to develop the junior team to the point where they can host and travel to competitive events. The curling ice is installed in November, which gives the club, as with all curlers in Jasper, a short season to work with. Scott says that if the ice was put in earlier, the junior team would be quick to take advantage. Part of Scott’s long-term vision for the junior curlers is the creation of a high school league, and having available ice earlier in the school year could be an asset. 

Scott’s oldest son, David, is the only senior high-school-aged curler in the club at the moment, but a majority of the members are just about to finish elementary school. The younger Scott believes that the reason he is unique amongst his schoolmates has everything to do with an early start in the sport.

“It’s a family thing for us,” he says. “I started when I was 10 and most of the other people in school didn’t curl until gym class, so I had that start.”

David skipped the Jasper entry in the junior zone playdowns and competes with his father and two younger brothers in men’s league play. He’d love to work towards competing at a regional and provincial level, he says, but it’s hard to do when there aren’t many potential teammates available in town. That doesn’t stop him from dreaming big.

“I have been watching a bit of the Olympic tournament,” he says. “To be there one day ... that’s what I’d like.”