Lucas Punkari
TSN is coming to Fort Frances.
The Fort Frances Curling Club’s bid was announced as the 10th and final winner of this year’s “Kraft Celebration Tour” late yesterday afternoon during TSN’s SportsCentre—defeating a bid from Dryden’s track-and-field facility in last week’s 24-hour online voting showdown.
“I’m still kind of in a state of shock over all of this,” admitted club president Ron Silver, who had submitted the winning bid with fellow club member Patrick Briere.
“It’s been quite the past two weeks for everyone involved, and it was quite the night last night when we found out that we had won,” he noted this morning.
“There was a lot of energy in Boston Pizza among the group that we had there,” Silver added.
“And when the announcement was made, it was a like a jet plane going overhead with how loud it was.”
During the 24-hour voting process,which ran from 11 a.m. on Friday until 10:59 a.m. on Saturday, the curling club’s bid amassed a total of 518,082 votes, which easily dispatched Dryden’s 272,292 votes.
The two Northwestern Ontario communities had the most votes of the 20 finalists in this year’s “Kraft Celebration Tour” competition, with Fort Smith, N.W.T. being third (garnering 253,022 votes for its project).
“The support that we had from all over the place was amazing as we basically doubled any other community’s votes for this year’s tour,” Silver noted.
“The whole community here really jumped on board with us,” he lauded.
“And whenever we turned to business for help, they were willing to help, which is something that really stood out for me.
“I know we had tremendous support from the NOCA [Northern Ontario Curling Association] and from curlers across Northern Ontario, and we even had people voting for us from New Zealand and Japan from what I’ve been told,” Silver said.
With the win, the curling club will receive $25,000, which will go towards offsetting the costs of its new geothermal heating unit.
In addition to that, TSN will host a live taping of SportsCentre here on Sunday, Aug. 25 that will air at 5 p.m. (CDT), with a community barbecue also being put on by Kraft.
“Now is when the real work begins to get the party set up,” Silver stressed.
“TSN is going to have some people coming into town tomorrow, and we are going to be getting the blueprint for getting things set up for Aug. 25.
“That will include picking the location out for where the taping is going to take place, along with working on setting up some fun things for [SportsCentre anchors] Jennifer [Hedger] and Darren [Dutchyshen] to do when they come up here,” he added.
