Students work over the keyboards in the computer lab at Centennial Public School voting for North Bay as Hockeyville. Organizers of the event figure students and adults plugged in more than 5,000 votes between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Students work over the keyboards in the computer lab at Centennial Public School voting for North Bay as Hockeyville. Organizers of the event figure students and adults plugged in more than 5,000 votes between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Photo by Steve Freyer.
By Steve Freyer
Centennial Public Elementary School opened its doors on Tuesday to people of all ages to come and participate in supporting Hockeyville North Bay, by hosting a fun day from 10:00am-2:00pm. The day consisted of playing ball hockey in the parking lot, filling out a free raffle for a chance to win prizes and for people to come into the school to vote for North Bay as Hockeyville as many times as they wanted. Voting in abundance is exactly what the turnout did, with three kids stating they voted over 750 times combined just at the school. That’s not including the countless times they’ve voted from home, as the kids’ passion for North Bay to be Hockeyville has had a major impact in North Bay making it into the top five. “Today I’ve voted probably over 275 times, but almost 1000 times overall to get us to this point,” said 14 year old Devon Marson, who’s a student from West Ferris High School. Marson has attended several events promoting Hockeyville, including a meeting at the Chamber of Commerce last Thursday and the Canadian Pond Hockey Face-Off tournament that took place behind Canadore College a couple weeks ago. He says it’s important to show support and had a good time doing so, as he played hockey with friends and fellow youngsters. “It’s good to show community spirit and that you really want to be number one and not number five,” Marson said. “We’ve been playing hockey and voting back and forth. It’s pretty cool to play with the little kids, giving them the puck and watching them score, seeing them cheer,” he explained.
J.P Poudrier, who’s a teacher at Centennial, organized the fun day for kids and parents as well as allowed his students to vote in class last Friday before the March break when there were still ten teams in the running. “The students were all worried about not having a chance to vote, so the ones out here, it was their idea to kind of open it up,” Poudrier explained.
Despite a smaller turnout from the community than planned, Poudrier thinks the day was a success and the excessive voting by the kids that did show up will make up for the lack of attendance. “We’ve had probably around throughout the morning about 30 kids and some parents,” Poudrier said. “Every vote counts, some of the kids in here have been voting up to 600 times I think one kid was up to, so it’s been successful. We were hoping to get a few more people, but we understand that it’s the March break and this was a last minute idea,” Poudrier added.
By showing up for the various events promoting Hockeyville, Poudrier believes supporting them is imperative for North Bay’s love for hockey to get noticed.
“For me it’s just North Bay, I’m proud of the city, the fact that it’s Hockeyville, I’m a big hockey fan, I grew up playing minor hockey here on the outdoor rinks, my kids are going to grow up here and play hockey here, so anything we can do for the community,” Poudrier explained.
“We’ve lost our OHL team and our population is not growing so this is just anything to put North Bay on the map,” he added.
Just for showing up to vote and play ball hockey people were treated with a free raffle, with items donated by Tim Horton's as prizes. “We have toques, hats, golf towels, a picture autographed by Alex Auld, posters of Crosby, Binoculars and a bunch of other stuff,” explained 13 year old Centennial student Zach Wilson, who volunteered for the day to help out. “It’s all pretty cool because it’s all free,” Wilson added.
Final voting will go until 11 a.m. ET on Friday, March 16th. The winner of the 2007 Kraft Hockeyville event will be announced on March 17th.
North Bay has already been awarded $10,000 in arena upgrades, which they won during the merit prize voting that took place between February 5th and 23rd. Now that they’ve made it into the final five possible cities to host an NHL exhibition game and receive $50,000 in arena upgrades, there’s no point of stopping the voting frenzy now.
