Amélie Blais founded Passion Curling in Quebec in 2015. Since then, its youth programs have expanded to clubs across Canada. In this episode, we talk about how she started curling, her competitive experience, the creation of Passion Curling and becoming certified as a Competition-Development coach.
Some of the topics we discuss include:
* How her family got her started in curling (1:33)
* Her competitive experience, including playing in the Quebec Winter Games at age 11 (5:04)
* What was missing from her curling club and how it motivated her to create "Passion Curling" (9:53)
* The U12 "Blizzard" program that will be used in Saskatchewan and B.C. (15:03)
* Coaching a Quebec "Colts" team in order to get her Comp-Dev certification (19:10)
* The contract she signed with her Colts team (24:26)
* What values are important to her as a coach (27:30)
* Being a Rocks & Rings instructor in Quebec (31:16)
* A kid who reminded Amélie of herself when she taught kids curling (34:50)
Links to the resources mentioned in this episode:
Passion Curling Web site
http://passioncurling.com/
Amélie's e-mail address: passioncurling@gmail.com
Follow our podcast on Twitter: @kidscurling
Glenn Gabriel is an NCCP-certified curling coach who lives in Pickering, Ontario, Canada. He has been the coordinator of the Little Rocks (U12) program at East York Curling Club in Toronto since 2011. If you have a question or feedback on the podcast, send us an e-mail at coachingkidscurling@gmail.com
The intro and outro music is "Golden Sunrise (Instrumental Version)"
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward/The_Wake_1790/JoshWoodward-TheWake-NoVox-10-GoldenSunrise
By Josh Woodward
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Josh_Woodward
Licensed under CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/