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Winter Games brings together top local athletes

Several young local athletes got a chance to enjoy their own Olympics last month and a couple even walked away with medals when they competed for Team Prairie Central and Team South West at the 2014 Saskatchewan Winter Games held Feb. 15 to 22 in Prince Albert.

“It was a great experience,” said Elbow’s Shane Lafontaine, 14, who won a gold medal with the Prairie Central badminton team. “The competition is really good. There was lots of pretty amazing athletes there. You’re kind of nervous when you start, but after you just get used to it and you start playing your sport. Its real good competition and lots of fun.”

Overall, the badminton team went undefeated at the Games going 3-0 in round-robin competition with victories over Parkland Valley, Regina and South West before moving on to the gold medal match against Rivers West (4-0). In the Feb. 22 final at Carlton Comprehensive High School, Prairie Central beat Rivers West 5-4 to take the gold.

“I was ecstatic,” Shane said. “I never thought that we could win and it just really made my week.”

Davidson’s Breanna Shaw and Hanley’s Kianna Dietz suited up as forwards for the Prairie Central female hockey team that finished fifth out of nine districts in the province that competed at the Games. The girls earned the spot by beating Parkland Valley 4-0 Feb. 22 at the Dave G. Stewart Arena after compiling a 1-2 record in round-robin play.

Kianna, 14, said the skill level of all the female hockey players was “awesome” making the tournament great to take part in. She said the Olympic-style organization of the games with an athletes village and having the best hockey players from all over Saskatchewan take part made the Games really special.

“I thought it was really cool to be with all the other athletes and the closing ceremonies were really cool,” said Breanna, 13. “Everyone was really nice and supporting. It was fun to be with everyone and meet new people.”

On the male hockey team, Hawarden’s Nolan Haugen and Loreburn’s Dodge Long led the attack for Team Prairie Central. After going 3-1 in round-robin play, the boys lost their final game 3-1 to Saskatoon Feb. 19 at the Art Hauser Centre putting them in fourth place.

Dean McNabb, a 13-year-old goaltender for Team South West, said there were several good teams at the Games, but winning and losing wasn’t really the main focus for their team. He said they were out there to have a good time and that is just what the week provided.

“It was a lot of fun,” said Dean, whose team finished sixth in the standings. “I met a lot of new people and the athletes village was really amazing. There was three gyms and we had the freedom to do whatever we wanted.”

The Prairie Central female curling team, which has Hanley’s Hanna Anderson as its skip, not only won a bronze medal at the Winter Games, but also qualified for the 2015 Canada Games training program.

“Now we train all year and then in December we playoff again for the Canada Games to represent Saskatchewan,” said Hanna, 16. “You do on-ice training and then you do nutrition and strategy and fitness and all that stuff.”

To read more please see the March 3 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Davidson

Local phone numbers used in scam

Telemarketers with a too good to be true sales pitch designed to empty a person’s wallet for something that is not too good at all have found a new way to get people to fall for their tricks.

Daniel Williams, senior call-taker supervisor at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, said vacation call centres in Florida have started using a new form of “Caller ID Spoofing” where the first six digits of a person’s phone number followed by four random numbers appear on the phone. He said this tricks people into believing they are receiving a local call offering them a once in a lifetime travel package to an exotic location for a small credit card payment, which makes the actual “lousy deal” easier to believe.

“A lot of consumers now are very hesitant about picking up any blocked or foreign looking numbers, (but) this call has nothing to do with the number that is showing up,” said Williams. “Sometimes the call display shows the name of the person who the phone belongs to and sometimes it doesn’t. The legitimate holder of that number, they’re not (the one) dialing. It’s simply a call display trick.

“Then there are different pitches that they’re using at the start and it’s usually automated and the most common one is, ‘you’ve won 260,000 Air Miles, if you wish to claim press one,’ and when you press one you get patched through to the vacation call centre in Florida.”

Williams said selling lousy vacation packages is not illegal and has been around for a while and will continue to be as long as people are willing to buy them. He said the deception is the way the telemarketers are getting their foot in the door.

“In the last year more and more of what we’re seeing is they’ve gone to this first six digits of your phone number and then a random last four,” he said, noting Caller ID Spoofing has actually been around since 2004 and used to just be a series of random numbers. “It’s very common now. Where it is really worth our while to document the information is the consumer who has bought the vacation package on their credit card and then feels they’ve been cheated because they went into this because of the connection with Air Miles.”

Terry Oxman, a resident of Davidson, said he received a call with the number 306-567-1731 Feb. 18 at around 2 p.m. stating that he had won a vacation or prize. He said initially he thought it was a “Davidson local thing” and only hung up on the person because it was a bad connection.

Oxman said he called the number right back and received a message from SaskTel saying this number is out of service. It was only then that he realized it was a scam.

“This is the first time I recall it being a local call,” he said. “I would hate to hear someone got stung by this thinking it was a Davidson number.”

To read more please see the March 3 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Sports

Aztecs win mixed team curling sectionals

The Loreburn Aztecs, Outlook Blues and Davidson Raiders junior curling teams met up at sectionals last Thursday at the Davidson Communiplex with each school coming away with a rink advancing to the district playoffs March 7 and 8 at Rosetown.

The Blues junior boys curling team beat the Davidson squad of Cole Murfitt (injured), Addison Ouellette, Morgan Manz, Braeden Fowler and Reegan Taylor two games to none, while the Raiders junior girls team of Katherine Cool, Jordan Matheson, Hannah Gust and Jesselynne Palmer bested the Blues by the same score. In the mixed game the Aztecs rink of Kaitlyn Glubis, Shane Lafontaine, Tori Rendall and Jackson Norrish posted 7-3 and 6-4 scores to beat the Raiders squad of Phoenix Prpick, Breanne Townsend, Nathan Chomyshen and Jessica Townsend giving them the win.

Aztecs coach Heather Norrish said both of the mixed games were close and the outcome just came about through her players taking their time and thinking through the plays they learned to master in practice. She said winning is fine, but the players just getting in some games is the real reward.

“They’re learning lots about the game,” said Norrish. “Grant Abbott has been helping us with his expertise in curling and coming out and showing us different things and they’ve really learned a lot this year. The games are what they need. They gain experience on what to do.”

Tracey Palmer, coach of the Raiders curling team, said sectionals are just a great way for her players to gain experience in a game situation. She said the squads have been learning many different things this season including sweeping, turns, slides and everything else, so no matter how things turn out they can consider this a good season for curling.

“We have a number of kids this year, so that is good because we want to pique their interest and when that is piqued we want to keep going,” said Palmer. “It’s a sport that they can play for life. Hopefully they can get some experience here and want to continue to play.”

Norrish said the games in Rosetown would have four sectional winners going up against each other, but she doesn’t have any expectations about coming home with lots of victories. She said the hope is the curlers play well and apply what they’ve learned so far this winter.

“The kids have had some good learning experiences out on the ice so far,” she said. “I think that strategy wise they’ve learned a lot of things and hopefully they’ll have some good games.”

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Motorists seek shelter in Davidson

For the second time in less than a year, Davidson residents opened their homes to complete strangers after icy conditions and blowing snow forced the Saskatchewan Ministry of Highways to close Highway 11 between Kenaston and Regina for approximately two hours last Wednesday stranding travellers in town.

Davidson Emergency Measures Operations (EMO) coordinator Trish Shilling said about 80 of the 175 people who were diverted off the highway to Davidson Town Hall and decided to spend the night in town were billeted to 25 different households. Another 80 headed to the New Life Pentecostal Assembly to sleep on bedding provided by the Davidson Health Centre. She said the 15 other travellers decided to stay overnight at the Town Hall despite the EMO having more homeowners in town willing to act as billets.

“It ran a lot smoother than last year,” said Schilling when comparing Feb. 18 to the first time she had to organize emergency shelter for stranded travellers early last March. “This time I had a little more forewarning I guess. Last time, we got there and people were already streaming in, 20 to 30 at a time, while this time they kind of trickled in. It wasn’t late at night (like last time), so the time of day made a difference because it was still daylight and people weren’t as panicked. Even the travellers were more relaxed and we had more time to get set up and talk to them and get organized.”

A Craik RCMP constable said the provincial Ministry of Highways closed Highway 11 between Kenaston and Regina at 3:15 p.m. due to bad weather conditions and reopened it at 5:30 p.m. resulting in motorists being diverted to the Davidson Town Hall and Craik Legion Hall during that time. He said they received 19 calls for traffic collisions on Highway 11 during the blizzard including one for a jack-knifed semi with two trailers that blocked the southbound lane one kilometre south of Girvin that backed up 200 vehicles behind the collision for upwards of five hours.

Estevan residents Pam Dechief, Leann Boehm and Sheila Guenther were three motorists who found themselves stopped outside of Girvin due to the semi accident. They said they were on their way home from volunteering and checking out the Saskatchewan Winter Games in Prince Albert when they found themselves in the back up.

“We were there for awhile waiting on the highway for about an hour and a half listening to the radio and finally it sounded like they weren’t going to be able to clear the highway off anytime soon,” said Guenther, who along with the other two women and Brandon’s Tammy Johannson were billeted by Bob and Shirley Bender. “We came into town, stopped at the first motel, the Jubilee, and waited a little bit to see if they had any rooms. They sold out the last two rooms right before it was our turn. Then we started driving around town looking for another one and I called the town office and talked to a man there and he told me about (the) EMO coordinator, so I called her.”

To read more please see the February 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Davidson

Rail and grain companies need a plan to clear grain backlog

There are several different issues with the delays in grain movement, which is a month to two months behind schedule in this area for getting older contracts cleaned up, but one local farmer doesn’t believe a resolution is coming anytime soon.

“We’re cleaning up our January canola contracts getting to the end of February right now,” said Davidson farmer Rob Stone, noting the delay is also stopping farmers from doing any new contracts for the next few months. “We could have probably had that cleaned up sooner, but the weather didn’t work for us and we weren’t concerned (about) moving at that point. There were a lot of people who jumped in line to make sure they were delivered too, so from our experience it’s not horrible. It was worse and it can get worse again if the railways don’t deliver. They missed two trains in a row at Richardson, so two weeks in a row that there was no cars and (if) you start having that happen on a consistent basis it really affects their capability to do any business.”

Stone said little accountability for the railroads to move the grain volume and honour their service agreements is still only one of the issues with the backlog of grain movement. He said the main problem is the grain companies not pushing hard enough in a public forum for improved service, which would include more railway employees and more engines dropping off cars and picking them up.

“There really hasn’t been a lot of pressure from the grain companies to this point,” he said. “It’s a tough one for sure, but the biggest issue is everyone has got a different reason why the railroads aren’t doing their job or performing to our expectations and the old excuse of it’s winter, it’s cold, that sort of stuff, (well) it’s cold and winter every year. We need to find better solutions (instead of) making excuses.”

Greg Brkich, MLA for Arm River–Watrous and a Bladworth farmer, said the system is backed up about two months due to several factors including the large crop grown last year, bad weather conditions and a couple November derailments. He said the province is trying to find a solution to this through meeting with both CN (Canadian National Railway) and CP (Canadian Pacific Railway) and grain companies to come up with a quicker method of getting grain moved.

“The short-term (solution) is for the railroad companies to put more crews on and put more trains out there,” said Brkich. “Long term is we have to sit down with the (grain) companies and the railroads to develop a long-range plan to handle this kind of volume.

“You go back 10 years (and) we’ve grown bigger crops (almost every year). With the improved farming techniques that are out there we expect this to be the norm, so the problem has to be looked (at) into the future. This isn’t a one-time problem.”

Brkich said there are penalties in the Federal Fair Rail Freight Service Act that grain companies can pursue to make sure the railroads perform up to expectations, but the companies haven’t been using them. He said that is something the province is asking the companies to use to solve the backlog problem because it is only the grain companies that can bring action forward.

To read more please see the February 24 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

Sports

Victoria Royals hold quick skate on Davidson Rink ice

The Western Hockey League’s Victoria Royals put on a display of skill and hard work for a small group of minor hockey players Feb. 16 at the Davidson Rink.

The Royals stopped by the rink for an hour-long practice sandwiched between a 5-4 win over the Prince Albert Raiders a day earlier and an eventual 4-3 shoot-out victory in Moose Jaw on Family Day against the Warriors.

“We (were) on our way to Moose Jaw and there was no ice available for us,” said Dave Lowry, head coach of the Royals (41-16-4). “We started looking at the smaller communities on the way and Davidson had ice available. We play an afternoon game (Feb. 17), so we just wanted to have a quick skate and loosen up.”

Lowry said the ice was good and the rink was pretty unique. He said it’s great for smaller communities to have facilities like the Davidson Communiplex that teams on the road can take advantage of.

“If we can’t find ice along the way we’ll stop wherever we can,” he said. “We’re fortunate that this community had ice available and let us take it and use the facility.”

Brett Cote, a third-year defenceman for the Royals, said they likely wouldn’t get in a pre-game skate before their afternoon game against Moose Jaw, so stopping at a different rink on the way for a skate was a good move.

“We’ve done this in previous years,” said Cote, who has two goals and 28 points on the year. “We did it I remember two years ago when we came out here. We did it once, but usually we just go to whatever the city is and use their barn.”

The Royals practice in Davidson came after they completed the first leg of a seven-game road trip that sees the team play four games in Saskatchewan split up between a quick hike to Manitoba to play the Brandon Wheat Kings before eventually finishing off with a two-game stand at Prince George against the Cougars.

“It’s real important, but the one thing it’s good for our team is we’re comfortable playing on the road as well,” said Lowry. “We play the same whether we’re at home or on the road and we’ve been able to find success that way.”

Cote said they’re pleased with how things are going for the club so far this season, but the teams they’re facing over the two weeks across the Prairies and back home in BC are all tough. He said they’re just going to keep working hard and hopefully move up in the standings as they get ready for the playoffs.

“The last couple years we’ve gotten knocked out in the first round of the playoffs,” said Cote. “The expectation this year is definitely to make it past the first round and then obviously see where we go from there.”