By Robin Short
Telegram Sports Editor
Nathan Young hasn’t won a lot of provincial curling championships — his only national exposure came a year ago at the Canada Winter Games — so his selection to the Canadian squad for the 2020 Youth Winter Olympic Games is a “humbling experience” for the Torbay teen.
Young, 17, is in Lausanne, Switzerland for the third edition of the Youth Winter Olympics which opened Thursday and brings together nearly 2,000 athletes from 15 to 18 from over 200 countries.
The first Youth Winter Games took place in Innsbruck, Austria in 2012.
Sports represented in Lausanne, along with curling, are alpine, freestyle and cross-country skiing, ski jumping, biathlon, Nordic combined, bobsleigh, luge, skeleton, figure skating, hockey, speed skating and snowboard.
Curling is co-ed, with a mixed-team competition this week and mixed doubles during the second week of the competition. Young will be skipping the mixed team that includes third Emily Deschenes from Ottawa, second Jaedon Neuert of Winnipeg and lead Lauren Rajala of Sudbury, Ont. Their first game is today against Russia.
“This is very humbling for me. I’m looking to soak up everything that comes with this in Switzerland.”
Nathan Young
Young isn’t the only Newfoundlander in Lausanne. Sam Follett of St. John’s is the mixed team’s alternate.
“Curling in Canada is very competitive, of course,” said Young, a Grade 12 Gonzaga high school student, “and you never know when or if you will ever get a chance to represent your country.
“Only for my experience in Red Deer (Alberta, at the 2019 Canada Winter Games), I’ve seemed to have kept losing in provincial finals,” he said with a hint of a chuckle.
He was 2-4 at the 2020 provincial juniors in Corner Brook last month, and lost in the final of last year’s provincial under-18 championship.
“This is very humbling for me,” he said of the Youth Winter Olympics. “I’m looking to soak up everything that comes with this in Switzerland.”
Young applied to attend the Youth Olympics through Curling Canada. Not only were the athletes’ on-ice abilities taken into consideration, so too were other factors such as their academics and if they were involved with volunteerism.
Young was noticed in Red Deer, where he skipped Newfoundland and Labrador to a fourth-place finish.
He dropped an 8-7 game to Manitoba in the bronze-medal game after falling behind 8-0 after three ends.
Young and reigning provincial men’s champ Andrew Symonds are both 7-4 and tied for the fourth and final playoff spot following the round-robin in St. John’s Super League curling. Young also reached the semifinal of the first Centennial Spiel, a World Curling Tour event at the Remax Centre (St. John’s Curling Club) last weekend.
Follett plays third for Young in local play, along with second Nathan Locke and lead Ben Stringer.
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