O’Leary makes Top-10 in Kraft Hockeyville

O’LEARY – The O’Leary Community Sports Centre has less than a week to lobby for votes in its bid to become Kraft Hockeyville’s 2017 grand prize-winner.

Bloomfield Elementary School students and staff were showing their support for O'Leary's bid to become Kraft Hockeyville Friday, even before the O'Leary Community Sports Centre was named a Top-10 entry for the coveted title.

O’Leary’s arena was the only Maritime entry to advance when the Top-10 entries were announced on Hockey Night in Canada late Saturday night.

VOTE HERE

Bill MacKendrick and other members of O’Leary’s contest entry committee were gathered around a television next door at the Maple Leaf Curling Club when the announcement was broadcast just before midnight.

From the close to 3,000 entries coast-to-coast, MacKendrick said he was feeling fairly confident judges would put O’Leary’s submission through to the Top-10.

“We knew we had a half-decent video and we knew we had a pretty good write-up,” he said.

But they took no chances and actively promoted their entry from the time entries closed on Feb. 5 until Saturday’s announcement.
MacKendrick believes that helped.

Out of 100 photos appearing on the competition’s website, “at times we had 20 posted,” he noted.

Most of those photos were from Twitter feeds from area residents and businesses in support of O’Leary’s entry. They’re included a mannequin challenge at Evangeline-Central Credit Union, the arena’s Zamboni at the credit union’s drive-thru and a Bloomfield School assembly.

But now that O’Leary has made the Top-10, activity needs to be ratcheted up so much more, said MacKendrick who was expecting his committee to gather on Sunday to strategize.

“To win the East, I figure we need between 1.5 and two million votes,” he said. That cannot be accomplished in O’Leary, or even on P.E.I., alone. He said the committee will be urging area residents to contact family members and friends all across Canada to lobby for O’Leary’s entry.

Making it this far in the competition earns the O’Leary Community Sports Centre - and each of the other Top-10 entries - $25,000 in arena upgrades.

But MacKendrick said his committee, which also consists of Joanne Wallace, David Peters, Della Sweet, Tammy Rix and Dean Getson, has some unfinished business. They made it to the Top-10 of the inaugural Kraft Hockeyville competition 11 years ago but that didn’t give them any funds for their arena.

The sports centre is now 25 years old and could really use the $100,000 in arena that comes with being the top entry from Eastern Canada, MacKendrick acknowledged. That’s determined by online votes alone. Thus the urgency to get as many votes as possible during the 9 a.m. March 12 to 11:59 p.m. March 13 (EST) voting window.

The top entry from the east and the top entry from the west will go head-to-head for online voting from March 19 to March 20 with the overall winner receiving the Kraft Hockeyville Trophy and a 2017 NHL pre-season exhibition game.

MacKendrick says his committee agrees the prize is worthy of an all-out effort to rally for votes.

Who they’re up against

Top 5 West

Ituna, Saskatchewan

Wilkie, Saskatchewan

Maskwacis, Alberta

Didsbury, Albera

Courtenay, British Columbia

Top 5 East

O’Leary, Prince Edward Island

Bay Roberts, Newfoundland,

Saint-Ambroise, Quebec