Curling As A Kid & Beyond! With Johnson Tao (Richmond, BC)

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THE "CURLING AS A KID & BEYOND!" SERIES: Episode #6

This episode is part of a series where I interview current and former competitive curlers to find out how they grew to love the sport of curling as a young person. In addition, I'll ask some of them what it's like to coach young people. And, in other cases, I'll ask them what it's like having their own children in the sport.

Johnson Tao is a silver medallist at the 2022 Canadian U21 Curling Championships. He also curls for the University of Alberta and is one of the winners of the 2021 “For The Love Of Curling” Scholarships given out by Curling Canada. In this interview, we talk about how he attended the Vancouver Olympics at age 7 and how that sparked his interest in curling. We talk about how he coached his own high school team in Richmond, B.C. Then we talk about what it means to be a competitive curler who is also Chinese-Canadian.

Some of the topics we discuss:
* How watching the curling at Vancouver 2010 led to him joining a junior curling program (3:57)
* The first time he visited a curling club (5:28)
* What was it about the sport that he enjoyed? (7:56)
* His first competitive team (10:44)
* Coaching his high school team (13:27)
* How he was recruited to the University of Alberta (17:15)
* What does a "typical curler" look like? (22:20)
* How to get more BIPOC curlers into clubs (24:20)
* Johnson's "curling idol" (27:28)
* RAPID-FIRE QUESTION SECTION (28:36) including Mother's Day greeting (33:01)
* Johnson's new hobby (33:33)
* THE BIG QUESTION: How do we get kids to fall in love with the sport of curling and stay with it for the long-term? (34:18)

Links to the resources mentioned in this episode:

Richmond (B.C.) Curling Club Web site
https://richmondcurling.com/

University of Alberta Varsity Curling
https://bearsandpandas.ca/sports/curling

Vancouver Curling Club Web site
https://vancurl.com/

"Fiesta" by IZ*ONE Music Video
https://youtu.be/eDEFolvLn0A

Johnson's IG: @jtaotaotao
Team Tao IG & FB: @TeamTao
Johnson's E-mail Address: [e-mail]

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 [e-mail]

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/

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