By Sophia Buckley-Clement
From the 11/18/22 edition of The Rutland Herald

Olympic gold medalist and curling champion Tyler George stopped by Rutland Intermediate and Middle Schools on Friday morning to speak at two assemblies with students about his experiences with the sport and his journey to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

A Duluth, Minnesota, native, George told students that he “grew up in a curling club” because his parents owned the club in his hometown. Winning bronze at his first World Championship as a junior in 2001, George went on to compete in the 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2017 World Championships, winning fourth, fifth, third and fourth, respectively.

“We did medal in 2016. It was the first medal for the United States in nine years, up to that point,” George told the crowd. “The Olympics were in 2018, and the trials were the year before that — it was my fourth Olympic trial, and I had not made it yet. So, it took me four tries just to get to the Olympics. What I learned through that is, it’s OK to have those losses. It’s OK to fail. It’s OK to miss shots. It’s OK to lose games, but as long as you learn from it, you get back up again.”

After his presentation, students were invited to ask questions about the sport and his career.

“You know how you said you used to play soccer? Well, I play soccer,” one intermediate student chimed in.

Eager students also asked what position George played, how old he was when he started, how many championships he’s been to and whether he has to “bend down to push the rock,” among others.

One keen student noticed the Olympic ring tattoo on his forearm, asking what it meant.

“The yellow ring is what the gold medal looks like. I have no other tattoos. I didn’t get one until after the Olympics, but my team made an agreement before the games that if we won gold, we’d all get tattoos,” George said. “Now, one of my teammates still hasn’t gotten his because I think he’s afraid. I’m not going to say who it was, but it was Skip.”

The two assemblies also were a kick-off to the middle school’s Lifelong Sports program, a six-week initiative aimed at exposing students to outdoor and indoor recreational activities in the Rutland area.

The program first began last winter, according to Director of Student Engagement Abby Bennett. It encourages students to get involved with “healthy life-long sports.”

“(Students) get to pick a sport winter sport — whether it’s skiing, cross country, snowshoeing — and we go for three hours every Thursday for six weeks,” said Bennett. “So they leave school, they take a bus (and) some of them go bowling; some of them go ice skating; some of them go to a workout gym.”

This year, she said, they also are offering six weeks of curling at the Giorgetti Athletic Complex.

Beginning after the middle school’s holiday break in December, students will have the opportunity to pick their first, second and third choice for an activity and be assigned one to participate in for the six-week program.

George’s visit to the schools was in part thanks to the coordination efforts of the Rutland Rocks Curling Club, and is a part of George’s “self-run business” of touring schools and curling clubs around the country to promote the sport.

“A lot of the outreach we like to do is with the younger crowd to try to get the curling participants around the country to (become) a younger group,” George said. “It has tended to be an older sport. So we’re trying to work on that pipeline of getting younger people involved.”

Also on Friday, George visited the Italian-American Club in Rutland for a viewing and talk-through of his team’s gold medal Olympic game with Vermont curlers.

George also will be at Giorgetti Arena for a skills clinic from 7 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 19.

“It’s always hit or miss with the kids, especially early morning getting close to break. But everybody was really attentive. The questions were good. I was really happy with how everything went and the feedback that we got from the kids,” George said.