A trifecta of Foothills athletes will be ringing in the new decade on ice.
Turner Valley’s Jacob Libbus, Foothills County’s Emily Kiist and Okotoks’ Blake Johnson take on the best in the province as the 2020 Curling Alberta Junior Championships roar into Lloydminster from Jan. 1-5.
“We’ve had a busy season with lots of bonspiels, lots of practice as well three of us compete on the U18 team, our third (Olivia Jones) skips that one,” said Kiist, the lead for Team Wytrychowski. “We’ve had lots of practice, lots of time on the ice.”
Time on ice has a way of paying off.
Team Wytrychowski — based out of the Airdrie Curling Club with skip Jessica Wytrychowski, third Jones, second Micayla Kooistra, lead Kiist and fifth Mercedes Smith — is the reigning provincial champions at the U18 level and will bring that know-how and experience to the Border City.
“I think every time you’re in a new competition you gain from experience that you can add to your bank,” added Kiist, a 2019 graduate of Foothills Composite High School. “I think just having so much different ability to take from different shots or different game situations helps us to have a good chance of being comfortable in whatever the games throw at us.”
It’s a tremendously busy time of year for the young athletes to prepare for elite competition as they try to balance schedules filled with final exams, work commitments and family time during the holiday season with teammates who live in other locations.
“It’s always difficult with Christmas and trying to fit families around,” Kiist said. “But we try our best to get as much practice as we can and put finishing touches on everything and polish everything up.”
Such is the logistical life of those playing high levels of the roaring game.
“We’re doing a lot of practising over this exam break, we’re all in exams so we’re going to have lots of opportunities to study and at the same time we’re going to have to practise” said Libbus, a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Alberta studying for his bachelor of education degree. “As you get closer and closer to Christmas we have to go home and see our families.”
Based out of the Saville Centre in Edmonton, Team Libbus – which features Libbus at skip, Dustin Mikush at third, Michael Henricks at second and Zach Pawliuk at lead — is hoping to take advantage of its surroundings at the often star-studded facility in the capital.
“We will be doing lots of team practices leading up to then and hopefully getting some help from some big names,” Libbus said. “After that Dustin will have to go back to his hometown, I’ll be coming back to Turner Valley and we will probably practice on our own and maybe have a few meetings as a team to discuss what our weekends look like.
“It’s lots of over-organization and preparation, I think.”
