Moosomin joins Kraft Hockeyville 2023: Needs community’s help in promoting arena
February 6, 2023, 4:08 pm
Sierra D'Souza Butts
Moosomin has the opportunity to win $250,000 and be the host for an NHL game, if it is the winner of the competition for Kraft Hockeyville 2023.
However, in order for Moosomin to win, members in the community are needed to post photos and stories in connection with the town’s indoor hockey rink—Mike Schwean Arena.
“The more the town is nominated, the more points we get,” said Summer Heide, tournament director for Moosomin’s Minor Hockey Board.
“People can go to the Kraft Hockeyville website and create an account. Then they can log in and submit up to five pictures.”
Different submissions vary in the number of rally points the community can earn, a submission of a nomination story is 10 points, sharing posts on Twitter is five points, adding photos to Moosomin’s page on the site is three points, adding a note is one point and reacting with emojis to nominated stories and photos are one point.
People have until Feb. 19 to rally up the points for Moosomin on the Kraft Hockeyville website.
“There’s lots of ways people can rally up the points,” said Heide.
“The more pictures we have on our rally page, the better it is for Moosomin and for the judges to notice our town.
“People can submit pictures of their kids playing hockey at the rink. The basis of the application is that they want to know how passionate your community is for hockey and what the rink means to your community.”
In order for Moosomin to win the grand prize, the community must make the top four finalists to qualify for the final phase of Kraft Hockeyville 2023.
Once being in the final phase, voting will take place to choose the first-place winner.
As such, people from the community have until Feb. 19 to submit their photos, videos, and stories online promoting Moosomin’s indoor arena, and sharing what the meaning of hockey means to the community.
“I’ve been trying to get Kraft Hockeyville for a while now. I’ve nominated our rink for the last few years and we’ve never been in the top four,” said Heide.
“Being in the top four finalists gets you to the voting stage, right now it’s just the rallying stage.
“I’m on the minor hockey board here so I know how much work the rink needs to it. There’s some major renovations needed to happen, and some upgrades. Our ice plant is the original ice plant that’s been there, it’s not doing the greatest anymore.
“One major problem about our rink is that our dressing rooms are in the basement. With the recent addition of sledge hockey, they’re not very accessible to sledge hockey players. We need to figure out a better solution to this for our rink.
“Hockey brings a tremendous amount of support for our local businesses. I feel like being able to keep our rink running is very important, not just for the kids who play hockey, but to our community as a whole because it is good for business to be able to keep on doing that.
“We also have really outgrown our one rink and need to add a second rink, but in order for a second rink to even be a consideration, we need to make sure our rink is going to be able to run for years to come. Otherwise building a brand new rink doesn’t help us, because we still would have only one ice surface.”
How can the prize help Moosomin?
With the town’s arena constantly being used at its full capacity, the $250,000 prize could help go towards renovations, that are greatly needed.
“This will be fantastic for the rink if we get the funding,” said Rec Director Mike Schwean.
“There’s some upgrades we would really like to do with the boards, I think everyone understands our boards and a lot of our glass is in need of repairs.
“It’s just a matter of needing some money, if something like this came along it would be fantastic.”
Schwean said the indoor arena in Moosomin gets used at almost every hour of the day during winter.
“Our rink gets used a lot. We keep track of it, I think in January it came to 8.5 to 9 hours a day of the rink being used,” he said.
“That’s just through formal rentals, it’s as busy of a rink as any in Saskatchewan.”
The support from the community would help significantly for Moosomin making it to the final round of the competition, said Schwean.
“The support from the town is what is needed,” he said.
“It’s pretty similar to when Sharpe’s was able to run that contest a few years back, the community got behind that and everything sort of snowballs and goes from there.
“Get online, support the project, boost it, share it, do all of those kind of things.”
