There is no joy in Morinville as the town's run at winning a $100,000 prize has struck out.
There is no joy in Morinville as the town's run at winning a $100,000 prize has struck out.
The good news, however, is that it still gets to keep $25,000 and that has Wayne Gatza appreciative of the groundswell of support for the town's bid to win the 2015 Kraft Hockeyville contest.
“I'm proud of how everybody came together … even our surrounding communities got behind us to support us. I was a little shocked, to be honest. I really thought that we had enough support from everybody to have enough votes to be in the top two.”
The contest originally had 300 communities competing to win cash to fund aging sports facilities. The Ray McDonald Sports Centre is certainly in need of a good deal of financial help, with structural issues, a leaky roof, and an outdated ice plant.
Morinville learned it made it to the top 10 in the middle of March but didn't know that it was out of contention until Saturday evening, just before the 48-hour voting period began. The two remaining communities vying for the top prize are Chatham, Ont., and North Saanich, B.C. Each gets $100,000 for arena upgrades but the grand prize winner also gets the chance to host an NHL game, a prize valued at approximately $500,000.
After the top two announcement, Gatza discovered some inconsistent information coming from the event's organizers.
He asked how many votes Morinville and the two finalist communities had received during the previous round of voting.
“The response back was ‘it wasn't about how many votes you had; it was about seeing how your community came together.' That leaves questions to be answered.”
He said that they also indicated that there were three million votes cast in total for the top 10 communities. Morinville, with its vote-a-thons and countless numbers of people getting sore digits from voting hundreds and thousands of times sure seemed like a shoo-in.
At the very least, he's pleased to say that the community really knows how to rally when the going gets tough.
“I thought that was amazing. I'm very proud of what we accomplished. At the end of the day, I thought we did an amazing job.”
