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A rink from Saskatchewan has never won Kraft Hockeyville.
Three communities from the province are looking to be the first.
Dinsmore, Moose Jaw and Pense are all hopeful 2020 is the year a Saskatchewan community is named Kraft Hockeyville.
The winning rink gets $250,000 and the right to play host to a pre-season NHL game.
Right now, the communities are in the rally stage. They are busy trying to rack up points to make the top four. Judging takes place from Monday until March 13 and the top four will be announced March 14.
Dinsmore
Karen Blackwell Jones, a teacher at Dinsmore Composite School, is helping out with Dinsmore’s Kraft Hockeyville bid.
“The rink that we have in Dinsmore is now officially 25 years old and is now in need of updating/upgrading and maintenance work and all of that costs money,” she said. “We have a new senior Dynamo team after a few years’ hiatus and the energy was just really, really high for hockey in Dinsmore this year and we thought we would give it a go.”
She said involvement from the village and surrounding communities has been amazing.
“We were a little late jumping on the bandwagon. We didn’t get fired up until probably the second week in January, but once that ball started rolling, it just gained momentum like crazy,” she said.
Rallying efforts in Dinsmore have included a pep rally at the school, and the first annual dusty-cup floor hockey tournament.
On Jan. 26, the village had a Hockeyville celebration day which included tables featuring artifacts of decades of hockey in the community. The Dinsmore school choir also recorded a song for Hockeyville.
“We are all so amazed at how this community has rallied together,” she said. “It has been so awesome to hear the stories through this process, and to pass those onto our kids.”
The village of Dinsmore has a population of 278 and is located 128 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon.
Moose Jaw
Chris Flanagan is a volunteer with Moose Jaw Minor Hockey. The city has entered the Pla-Mor Palace/Bert Hunt Arena in the Hockeyville contest.
“I think our city deserves something like this. We are a very tight-knit hockey community,” Flanagan said.
He said if Moose Jaw was to win the money, it would go towards the Bert Hunt Arena.
“We have a growing female program in our hockey association and we are running out of dressing room space. We need storage, the player benches need upgrades, as well as the stands. There’s a lot of work that needs to be put into the rink and maybe the $250,000 doesn’t cover it all, but it would at least be a start,” he said.
Ultimately, he’s hoping Saskatchewan comes out on top this year.
“I hope we make it into the top four, or at least a Saskatchewan community does and our province and our bigger cities like Saskatoon and Regina could back our smaller towns/villages and maybe this year will be the first time that we’ll have a Saskatchewan community win it,” Flanagan said.
Pense
Graeme Crosby is on the board at the Pense Memorial Rink and the town also wants to win Kraft Hockeyville.
“It’s a small Saskatchewan town; there’s hundreds of these across the province where this is the place to be in the winter, right?” Crosby said. “You can go down anytime of the evening, any day of the week, you’ll find somebody there and a hot cup of coffee.
“You might have a kid playing or a friend’s kid playing. It really is the gathering point for the town in the winter.”
The town of 500 people rebuilt its rink in 1989 after it burned down and now it needs funding as the community hub ages. If Pense wins the $250K, it would replace the piping system under the ice and level the ground, as it has been shifting over time.
“In total between those two things, the estimated cost is $300,000 and for a town of 500 people that’s quite a bit of money,” he said. “We’ve raised, just in the last five months alone, $58,000, so we’ve put a good dent into it. But if we could win this Kraft Hockeyville, we’d get there within a year and we could put our minds to rest.”
The rally portion is open until Sunday at Krafthockeyville.ca.
After the top four are determined, voting will be open March 27-28. The winner is to be announced March 28.