West Kelowna Hockeyville ready for Saturday

Contributed

With this Saturday’s reveal of the final five communities competing for Kraft Hockeyville, West Kelowna’s Hockeyville team is getting ready for what they hope will be another busy weekend of voting.

“We don’t yet know if we made it, but we’re staying optimistic and planning as though we have,” said West Kelowna Hockeyville Co-Chair, Adam Less.

Last week hundreds flooded into the Telus Community Voting Centre at The Best Western Hotel. But West Kelowna’s organizing committee is moving to a new location for this weekend’s voting.

“If we make the top five, we’ll be the only BC community in it and we’ll need all the voting power we can get to beat out the stiff competition back east. That means more computer voting stations. The Best Western didn’t have the room, so we’re moving to The Comfort Inn. We’ll be open 8pm Saturday and stay open round the clock until voting ends at 9 on Tuesday,” said Les.

The Hockeyville team, and the District of West Kelowna, are also planning to televise Saturday’s Canucks game free at Royal LePage Place, where the final five announcement is expected to be made during the game’s first intermission.

“We wanted everyone in the community to be able to come down for free and be together to hear the announcement live and celebrate if the news is good,” Les said.

But Less is quick to point out a final round of voting will begin immediately following the announcement, and he hopes everyone will start voting right away.

“The online and telephone voting kicks in right away and this time we’ll need everyone on board to beat our competition back east. We’ll also need folks to spread the word throughout the Province and mobilize as many voters as they can,” Less said.

If West Kelowna makes it to Hockeyville’s final round, they’ll be guaranteed $25,000 and will host CBC at Royal LePage Place on March 31 when the winner is announced live.

The Hockeyville winning community will receive an additional $75,000 and host an NHL preseason game in the Fall at their local rink. Voting will again be unlimited and voters mayvote as often as they want. Votes can be submitted, come Saturday night, either online at www.krafthockeyville.ca or by phone, toll free by calling 1-866-533-8066.