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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s top curling organization.<\/p>\n
In addition to excelling academically, the fourth-year Statistics student has skipped for the Brock Badgers men\u2019s curling team since 2022, medalling in the last three Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Men\u2019s Curling Championships.<\/p>\n
His passions combined this past summer when Henry secured a job with Curling Canada\u2019s high-performance team, a role that blended his perspective as an athlete with his data analysis skills.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of an aligning of the stars,\u201d he says. \u201cThis experiential opportunity allowed me to tackle a real-world problem that will have a meaningful impact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Working with Associate Professor of Mathematics and Statistics William Marshall, and supported by funding from the Government of Canada\u2019s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative and Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada\u2019s (CEWIL) Innovation Hub (iHUB<\/a>), Henry returned to Curling Canada with the goal of identifying small, meaningful advantages curlers can leverage at the highest levels of competition.<\/p>\n \u201cThis type of funding helps Brock\u00a0facilitate\u00a0practical partnerships with local industry by directly connecting organizations with our research labs. These meaningful\u00a0collaborations\u00a0give students the opportunity to contribute to real-world projects with impactful results,\u201d says\u00a0Jason\u00a0Causarano, Faculty of Mathematics and Science\u00a0(FMS)\u00a0Experiential Education Coordinator. \u201cThese experiences equip students with a competitive advantage in their future career search.\u201d<\/p>\n Henry\u2019s project is guided by research questions from Curling Canada\u2019s high-performance team and aims to allow coaches and analysts to focus on higher-level performance insights rather than time-consuming manual data extraction.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the top level of our sport, it\u2019s millimetres that make the difference,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you can find one little tidbit of information, that is incredibly valuable.\u201d<\/p>\n At the centre of the work is a computer vision program Henry built using overhead camera footage from Canada\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hope is that I\u2019m going to be able to automate this process,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n With weekly guidance from his faculty supervisor, Henry has broken the project into manageable steps while connecting classroom learning with high-performance sport.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout our tour season, we\u2019re competing on the world stage against full-time athletes,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cStories like Owen\u2019s highlight the incredible talent here in Niagara and the impact of federal investments in work-integrated learning,\u201d says Chris Bittle, Member of Parliament for St. Catharines. \u201cBy supporting opportunities that connect education with real-world experience, our government is helping students gain the skills and experience they need to succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n Minister of Jobs and Families and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Northern Ontario Patty Hajdu agrees.<\/p>\n \u201cCanada\u2019s economic future depends on youth. That\u2019s 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,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s classroom and research learning with real-world impact. To learn more, visit\u00a0Brock\u2019s Co-op,\u00a0Career\u00a0and Experiential Education website.<\/a><\/p>\n This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada\u2019s Innovative Work-Integrated Learning Initiative and\u00a0CEWIL Canada’s iHUB.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":108684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7484,13793,3319,41,1,58],"tags":[256,5050,766,2156,348,7416],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108680"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108686,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108680\/revisions\/108686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}