For Owen Henry, choosing a university was a bit like aiming for two targets at the same time; he needed to find an institution that would help him to achieve his academic goals and his dream of competing in the highest levels of Canadian curling.

Brock hit the mark for the first-generation university student, who not only found his academic and athletic stride at the University but also secured a valuable career connection with the country’s top curling organization.

In addition to excelling academically, the fourth-year Statistics student has skipped for the Brock Badgers men’s curling team since 2022, medalling in the last three Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Men’s Curling Championships.

His passions combined this past summer when Henry secured a job with Curling Canada’s high-performance team, a role that blended his perspective as an athlete with his data analysis skills.

When he returned to campus in the fall, he continued to explore sports analytics through his fourth-year honours project. Henry embraced the opportunity to conduct research as an undergraduate student and says the experience taught him to think creatively and translate high-performance insights for broader audiences.

“It was kind of an aligning of the stars,” he says. “This experiential opportunity allowed me to tackle a real-world problem that will have a meaningful impact.”

Working with Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics William Marshall, and supported by funding from the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative and Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada’s (CEWIL) Innovation Hub (iHUB), Henry returned to Curling Canada with the goal of identifying small, meaningful advantages curlers can leverage at the highest levels of competition.

“This type of funding helps Brock facilitate practical partnerships with local industry by directly connecting organizations with our research labs. These meaningful collaborations give students the opportunity to contribute to real-world projects with impactful results,” says Jason Causarano, Faculty of Mathematics and Science (FMS) Experiential Education Coordinator. “These experiences equip students with a competitive advantage in their future career search.”

Henry’s project is guided by research questions from Curling Canada’s high-performance team and aims to allow coaches and analysts to focus on higher-level performance insights rather than time-consuming manual data extraction.

“At the top level of our sport, it’s millimetres that make the difference,” he says. “If you can find one little tidbit of information, that is incredibly valuable.”

At the centre of the work is a computer vision program Henry built using overhead camera footage from Canada’s Olympic trials. The system identifies where curling rocks are positioned, records when they start and stop moving and timestamps each shot, enabling automated video tagging and deeper tactical analysis.

“The hope is that I’m going to be able to automate this process,” he says.

By creating a co-ordinate system for the curling sheet, the project makes it possible to analyze patterns and strategies across games and competitions, building a big-picture view of what works at the elite level.

With weekly guidance from his faculty supervisor, Henry has broken the project into manageable steps while connecting classroom learning with high-performance sport.

As graduation approaches, Henry finds himself at a familiar crossroads: deciding between further education, industry work and continuing to push toward elite sport as an Ontario Curling Council and Curling Canada High-Performance NextGen athlete.

“Throughout our tour season, we’re competing on the world stage against full-time athletes,” he says.

“Stories like Owen’s highlight the incredible talent here in Niagara and the impact of federal investments in work-integrated learning,” says Chris Bittle, Member of Parliament for St. Catharines. “By supporting opportunities that connect education with real-world experience, our government is helping students gain the skills and experience they need to succeed.”

Minister of Jobs and Families and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario Patty Hajdu agrees.

“Canada’s economic future depends on youth. That’s why we are taking steps to ensure that every young person has access to meaningful job opportunities and the support they need to thrive. It is only together that we can address the immediate needs for young talent in the job market while empowering the next generation with the skills, experiences and opportunities that will shape their futures,” she says.

From research labs and simulations to practicums and industry-embedded projects, Brock engages hundreds of students each year in hands-on experiential learning across all disciplines. Within FMS, work-integrated learning opportunities continue to expand through industry-driven research partnerships, connecting Brock’s classroom and research learning with real-world impact. To learn more, visit Brock’s Co-op, Career and Experiential Education website.

This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada’s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative and CEWIL Canada’s iHUB.