Thomas Scoffin needs little introduction to the Yukon's curling community.

Nationally, however, the 16 year old might enjoy a few words.

And he got them.

The 2012 Youth Olympic Games curling team was introduced during the fifth-end break of the Page 1-2 playoff game between Canada and Scotland at the World

Curling Championships at the Brandt Centre in Regina, Sask., Friday evening.

Canada beat Scotland 5-2, and followed up that performance with a 6-5 win over the Scots in the final on Sunday.

Scoffin called the experience of being introduced to the nation during the Friday match up "unreal” – not to mention watching world-class curlers live.

"I was excited and nervous leading up to it, but once it was happening, it kind of changed. My heart was pumping, but it's almost hard to remember; I can't even remember the sound of the crowd. It was just overwhelming,” Scoffin said.

Scoffin and his Youth Olympic teammates – P.E.I.'s Emily Gray, B.C.'s Corryn Brown and Manitoba's Derek Oryniak – also met Canada's world champion skip Jeff Stoughton and his rink and Amber Holland, who skipped Saskatchewan to victory at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts and a silver at the 2011 Capital One World Women's Curling Championship in Esbjerg, Denmark, in March.

"They were really nice,” Scoffin said of Holland's rink. "They let us come up into their skybox, they gave us everything…we met so many people and they were so supportive.”

It was a whirlwind weekend for Scoffin and his new team, which will travel to Innsbruck, Austria, to compete in the inaugural Winter Youth Olympics Jan. 13-22, 2012, against 16 countries, each represented by two junior men and two junior women.

Created by the International Olympic Committee, the Winter Youth Olympic Games will attract 1,058 athletes competing in seven Olympic Winter Sports (15 disciplines). The seven sports are bobsleigh, luge, skiing, curling, biathlon, ice hockey and skating, with the age of competitors ranging from 14-18 years old, depending on the sport.

The first Summer Youth Olympic Games were held in Singapore in 2010.

Now the stage is set for the first-ever winter edition.

"The Canadian Curling Association is very pleased to have completed our formal selection process for the first ever Winter Youth Olympic Games,” said Greg Stremlaw, the CCA's chief executive officer. "This event will offer an incredible opportunity to these four young athletes to represent Canada not only on the ice, but as ambassadors of Canada and the sport of curling. This will be an experience that these athletes will remember for the rest of their lives.”

That experience started Thursday, when Scoffin and his new teammates converged on the Saskatchewan capital before the CCA's announcement.

The team practised Friday and played the Saskatchewan girls Canada Winter Games team in an exhibition match, which was followed by a practice on the Brandt Centre ice before the semi-finals on Saturday.

"From day one, we had instant chemistry,” Scoffin said. "I've never seen anything like it. The selecting committee just did a phenomenal job; they couldn't have hand-picked four different personalities from different places that fit better together than we do.”

The selection of the athletes was a comprehensive process combining on-ice performance at the 2011 Canada Winter Games in Halifax, N.S., and a formal application process, which included a written essay, academic excellence, involvement in their communities and interest in other athletic and cultural activities.

Scoffin is a five-time competitor at the M&M Meat Shops Canadian Juniors, from 2007-2011, the youngest skip ever to participate in the Canadian Juniors – 12 years old in 2007 – a gold-medal winner in the 2008 Arctic Winter Games and a two-time competitor at the Canada Winter Games, the first in 2007 in Whitehorse.

His teammates aren't too shabby either.

Brown won gold at the 2011 Canada Winter Games, won the 2010 and 2011 BC High School Girls Provincial Championships and won the 2011 Juvenile Provincial Championships.

Gray was a provincial under-15 champion in 2009 and finished seventh at this year's Canada Winter Games.

And Oryniak won bronze at this year's Games.

"It feels like being on an all-star team almost, just being able to rely on your teammates, you know that they can make every shot,” Scoffin said, adding that having such a jam-packed first weekend together is an immediate boost to the team.

"The whole team is super positive right now. We're such a good fit together, we have fun no matter what all the time, we're staying loose and I just can't wait to play with them again.

"We teach other, we're super balanced. There are no egos involved whatsoever; everybody's super honest. I actually have a little more experience; because I'm from the Yukon, I have more opportunities, so I've been to nationals, where none of them have been to junior nationals, because they're younger.”

Scoffin credits his Yukon teammates with this new chapter in his curling life.

"It's been a long road. I've been with some of my teammates – what is this, the sixth year? – so I've done all my growing with them, I haven't played with anybody else.

And these Canada Games boys, I've learned a ton from them; I've never seen anybody work harder to try to be as best they can be. And that kind of inspired me to work my hardest to be the best I can be. I owe a lot to those guys,” he said of teammates Michael Hare, Kurtis Hills and Andrew Scoffin.

In fact, these were the same people Thomas wanted to tell when he first found out he was named to the Youth Olympic team in mid-March.

"When I found initially I wasn't allowed to tell anybody except for my family, so I had to keep it a secret until Friday. That was really tough. My friends, my teammates, all the people I wanted to thank, I couldn't tell them. I looked at it as a good problem to have.”

Scoffin was actually curling when the call came.

The phone call was supposed to come between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., and that night's match started at 6:45.

"I hadn't gotten the phone call yet. I was like, ‘Ugggh. Well I'll bring my phone out just in case,'” Scoffin said.

Then it happened.

"My phone starts ringing. I'm literally in the back press ready to go, and my phone rings. I stop and I answer the phone and I go off the ice and it's him and I was pretty pumped. Nobody really knew what it was about and I couldn't tell them. So it was tough to finish that game, but it was pretty cool.

"I wasn't sure how to handle it. I knew I had to keep it a secret, and that's an important thing to do, so I was able to do that. Obviously, from my reaction, my dad knew, he was playing with me at the time on my team, so he knew, and it was kind of a subtle congratulations. And then I just played unreal for the rest of the game.”

The national team will head to Edmonton at the end of the month for a training camp, and then head to Halifax for the Whitecap Curling Camp in August.

"For me it's a little different than someone in Kamloops or Winnipeg, where there's national training centres, but we still have a lot of resources to use up here,” Scoffin said.

"We're taking it really seriously, because we really are from coast to coast – from the Yukon to B.C. to Manitoba to P.E.I. It's really stretched out, so we need to maximize the time we have together.”

He wanted to thank his parents, teammates and sponsors for their support.

"I want to thank the people who helped me get here,” he said, adding that he measures success by having no regrets.

"The way I looked at it is, I'm going to work as hard as I can for this, and at the end I want to be able to have no regrets, to say I worked as hard as I could and I left everything out there. For anything, any opportunity, if you want it, then just do what it takes, commit to it.”