Lucas Punkari
After a long couple of days of waiting, supporters of the Fort Frances Curling Club’s bid in the annual “Kraft Celebration Tour” will find out late this afternoon if their efforts against Dryden were successful.
The results of the online voting showdown—the 10th and final one of the competition—will be announced during TSN’s SportsCentre, which airs at 5 p.m. (CDT).
“The weekend was very stressful as waiting for the results to come in has been crazy,” admitted club member Patrick Briere, who submitted the local bid with Ron Silver.
“I don’t like to wait to begin with, but I just want to know if we have won,” he noted.
“And I am sure that everyone in town is just as excited as I am.”
The 24-online voting process ran from 11 a.m. on Friday until 10:59 a.m. on Saturday, which saw the curling club become the major hub for those looking to support its bid.
“Myself and five others ended up staying for all 24 hours, and there were about 15-20 people who were there all night voting in shifts,” Briere said.
“The club was packed from 4-7 p.m. on Friday, with no free computers available, and there were a ton of people who were bringing their wireless devices to cast their vote,” he recalled.
“The support from the community has been great to see.”
Nine other local businesses also had computers on site for people to vote, with the traffic at those locations proving to be steady throughout their respective business hours.
As for today’s announcement, Briere is inviting people to come out to Boston Pizza to watch the SportsCentre broadcast.
“I would recommend that people get there early if they want to have a good seat as they have been announcing the winners over the last week about 20 minutes into the show,” Briere noted.
“All of the television screens will be on SportsCentre, and hopefully we will be hearing a ‘we won’ announcement.”
If successful, the Fort Frances Curling Club will receive $25,000 that will go towards offsetting the costs of its new geothermal heating unit.
There also will be a live taping of TSN’s SportsCentre here in August, along with a community barbecue staged by Kraft.
