One of the two local teams sent to the regional “Go for the Gold” competition near Sault Ste. Marie has earned a berth in the provincial finals this November at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.
Stacey Angus, Rebecca Cornell, Angela Teeple, and Melissa Brant, who was a last-minute substitution for Melinda Teeple, won the regional crown with a total score of 590 points in six games–75 better than the nearest team.
“We were pretty excited when we won,” noted Cornell, the youngest member of the team. “There was a pretty tough team from Algoma. I’d say it was pretty hard.”
“We kind of psyched ourselves out,” noted Angus, who admitted she didn’t expect her team to win the regional.
“All we wanted to do was beat the other team,” she laughed.
Beth Freeman, Amy Bill, Selene LeBlanc, and Laura Zimmerman made up the other local team at the regional competition. They finished with 275 points overall.
The provincial competition kicks off Nov. 7 with six teams in the running. Each team will play three games, then the top four will move on to the semi-final round.
The two winners will fight for the championship.
Travelling arrangements are still being worked out although transportation costs are being taken care of by the provincial 4-H association.
“Either myself of Kim Jo [Calder] will be going down,” noted Carol Angus, who chaperoned the trip to the regionals.
She said she was just as surprised as her daughter was to find out they had won the regional meet. “The questions stumped me,” she noted. “I didn’t know the answers to a lot of them.”
The local 4-H team now has a little more than a month to prepare for the provincial showdown. And Stacey Angus admitted there’s a more intense element of competition now than there was preparing for the regionals.
“We kind of did it just for fun. Now it’s really serious,” she said. “I don’t really know what to expect. We’re going to try really hard.”
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
