It seems that the residents of Morinville still have to wait to learn if their town made it to the Top Two of Kraft’s Hockeyville competition.
Voting for the Top 10 ended on Monday evening with no clear forerunners in sight. Perhaps the unlimited voting meant that the servers still need more time to compile and tally all of the votes. Community organizer Wayne Gatza said that the announcement of the two finalists (one from the east and one from the west) would come this Saturday night, immediately before voting commences between them.
“It is kind of a tough position to be in. We have to be prepared and that’s what we’re going to do.”
The competition is the food company’s way of helping to keep hockey going in small towns that have outdated arenas needing repairs. Morinville’s Ray McDonald Sports Centre has a number of ongoing issues that threaten its future, including a leaky roof, structural deficits, and an ice plant that needs replacement.
That’s why Gatza nominated the town for the contest in the first place, and community support was enough to warrant it getting to the semi-finals out of 300 original competitors.
He also rallied the town to “vote like crazy” during the 48-hour period that started last Saturday at 9 p.m. He said that there were some very encouraging messages on his Facebook page Morinville for Hockeyville 2015.
“There’s a lot of people that were posting ‘hey, my fingers are sore but it’s worth it!’ Some people felt like a robot. One person just kept on going hard, hard, hard … they said that they’re going to be talking gibberish for the next little while! It was quite funny!” he laughed.
He said that he knew there was a wellspring of Morinville supporters not just from the immediate community but also across the province and countrywide too, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia.
He figured that the town needed 1.5 million votes, leading him to do some mathematical approximations and postulations.
“If we had 3,000 people voting, they only had to vote 500 times. There were people that voted 2,300 times. There were some people that voted all day at the vote-a-thon. We had people that made 412 votes an hour. In the last 15 minutes, I made 56 votes.”
“To me, it was pretty amazing. It’s been incredible to see how many people actually jumped to help us out. The sad part is that we won’t know until later.”
The winning community will claim $100,000 in prize money to help repair its aging sports facility, plus a chance to host an NHL game. Second place gets $100,000 while the remaining eight competitors from the Top 10 contest each get $25,000.
Voting for the final two competitors starts on Saturday evening at 9 p.m. at www.khv2015.ca. People can vote as many times as they want until the same time on Monday.
