Ruthven curler wins bronze medal with Team Ontario

By Mark Ribble

A local curler has captured a bronze medal at the Canada Winter Games in Prince Edward Island that ended on March 5.

Dylan Stockton, 16, of Ruthven, began curling about six years ago when the Kingsville Curling Club offered youth curling to students of area schools. He is a student at Cardinal Carter Secondary School and member at the Sun Parlour Curling Club.

He has turned his love for the game into a place on the national stage as his team — Team Stratton — represented Ontario in the Under-18 Men’s Division.

One of his teammates — Skip Kyle Stratton — is from Harrow and is also a member at Sun Parlour Curling Club. The two met while youth curling at Kingsville several years ago. Dylan is the son of Ruthven’s Brian and Diane Stockton.

Dylan says that curling on that level has been quite an experience for he and his teammates and hopes that more curling at this level is in his future.

He has one more year left at the U18 level before moving up to U20 and then on to the adult competitions.

The team is currently in Ottawa competing in the U21 Provincials and he says the scouts are watching.

“The scouts for the Youth Olympics are watching, and I may have a chance to compete there,” he says.

Dylan says the Canada Winter Games in P.E.I. brought them some challenges and they went in hoping to medal in the competition.

“We were pretty sure we would medal,” he said. “Of course, we were hoping for gold, but the bronze is awesome too.”

Team Stratton compiled a 4-1 record in the round-robin portion of the games with their only round-robin loss to a strong Alberta team. They beat Newfoundland 6-3 in the quarterfinals before coming up against eventual gold medallist Nova Scotia in the semi-final match, where they lost 7-1.

“Nova Scotia was really strong,” he said. “We had some issues with the ice surface, which was a little dirty and gave us some trouble with the rocks.”

In the bronze medal match, they edged Alberta 7-6 on the strength of a three-point first end and two single points in the seventh and eighth ends. Dylan was happy to hear of all of the local support they received while in P.E.I., with the Wheatley Facebook pages — his father Brian grew up in Wheatley — providing updates as the games were played and links to the livestreams were also posted.

Team Stratton curls out of the London Curling Club where they are coached by Tim Lindsay.

Team Stratton represented Ontario at the Canada Winter Games in Prince Edward Island last week, winning the bronze medal. From left are coach Tim Lindsay, lead Owen Nicholls, second Dylan Stockton, vice Liam Tardif and skip Kyle Stratton. Stockton and Stratton are both members of the Sun Parlour Curling Club.