The Prairie Central under-14 basketball team competing at the 2012 Saskatchewan Summer Games in Meadow Lake July 29 to August 1 may be underdogs, but they are not shy about getting into battle against meaner competition.

The team boasts five ballers from the area on the 10-player roster including shooting guards James Morrison and Mark Rettger, centre Ben Nykiforuk, and point guard Huck Rettger from Davidson as well as forward Austin Evans from Kenaston. Assistant coaches Ian Kadlec, from Bladworth, and Davidson’s Luke Edwards are helping skipper Ken Rettger, a junior basketball coach at Davidson School, to prepare the team for the tournament.

“We have a great group of kids,” said coach Rettger. “You never know going in as we have all kinds of kids from different towns and they don’t know each other, but there is some very nice team chemistry.”

Rettger said the four players from Davidson have been playing together for the past five years, so they have a “pretty good idea” of what each other is up to on the court, plus the player from Kenaston used to play with them on a Basketball Saskatchewan team a few years back. He said their main obstacle is they are an inexperienced team as a whole compared to their opponents.

“We’re young but we’ve got some pretty good ball handlers and some good shooters,” he said. “We have a couple of big kids too, like we’ve got a boy from Osler who plays centre as well and he’s six foot four. We have a little bit of everything, some big guys who play well inside, some very good ball handlers and some shooters. They’re coming together. The last couple practices they really started to play as a team.”

The main competition at the tourney will be the city clubs from Saskatoon and Regina, which seems to be the case at every tournament due to their higher number of players available. Team Saskatoon appears to be a real threat, considering the team is made up of almost exclusively club players from the Saskatoon Slam.

“I’m hoping we can learn to play against them,” said Rettger, adding the team will have a chance to match up with Saskatoon during exhibition play before the tournament at the PAC gym at the University of Saskatchewan in late July. “I don’t know if we could legitimately go in there thinking we could win, but I just want to play well against them and show them what we’ve got.”

On Friday, July 6, members of the Hanley 4-H Beef Club moved into Prairieland Park for their Regional 4-H Show. Stalls were set up and animals settled in for the busy days of competition ahead.

Saturday morning began with the multi-species judging competition.  Members judged beef heifers, dairy heifers, sheep, light horse and quilts.  Members from the club placed well in the judging competition.

Saturday afternoon members competed in the Stockman’s competition by giving a presentation to the judges on showmanship, grooming, or selecting their project animal.  These scores were combined with judging scores, and Calina Evans placed in the top 10 overall, and was awarded a monetary prize.

In Team Grooming Saturday night, the junior team  of Kennedi Libke, Kaitlyn Yelich, and Kassy Read won their age group, and Calina Evans, Leah Libke and Anne-Marie Collins placed third in a large class of juniors. The senior and intermediate teams represented the club as well.

Sunday morning began early with showmanship competition.  All members competed and Calina Evans was Champion Junior Showman and Shelby Evans was Champion Intermediate Showman. Once all champions were named, they went back in to compete for the Supreme Showmanship title. The Senior Champion was named Supreme Showman, and Calina Evans was honored to be chosen Reserve Champion Supreme Showman.

The Heifer Show was next and Shae-Lynn Evans had Champion Charolais Heifer, with the Reserve going to Calina Evans.  Reserve Champion Cow/Calf went to Calina Evans’s two-year-old pair.

Monday was the day of the big steer show and sale.  Hanley club members winning their weight classes were Wylie Vermette, Kassy Read, Harley Libke and Shelby Evans. Wylie Vermette also went on to have his steer named  one of the Lightweight Division Champions. The steers sold Monday night, and members packed up to head home.  It was a very successful weekend to wrap up a great year. Thanks to everyone for their hard work and to leaders Travis and Shannon Libke for all their organizing and hard work.  4-H begins again in the fall!

Like most young people in the summer, Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre MP Tom Lukiwski has come home after school, or in his case a session of Parliament, only to find out spending two months basking in the rays at the lake is not to be and a summer job is waiting.

“The summertime is probably as busy a time as (Members of Parliament) have during the year,” said Lukiwski, who holds the position of Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader. “Many people who have not had the opportunity to meet with me while I’m in Ottawa have that opportunity now that I’m back in Saskatchewan. My calendar has been extremely busy so far and it will continue to be through the course of the summer.

“There are more events like barbecues and centennial celebrations, but also a lot of individual meetings with constituents and organizations.”

Lukiwski said his and the government’s focus at the time being is on reducing the size of the deficit, which means reducing the size of government among other things. He said after the global recession of 2008, the government was forced to bring in a stimulus package costing about $15 billion and that needs a trim.

As a result of this, the government was forced to end its involvement with managing community pastures, a topic near and dear to rural Saskatchewan’s hearts.  All 62 pastures in the province, which are used as grassland for cattle by area farmers and are rich in resources and endangered wildlife, will be discontinued under federal management by Agri- and Agri-Food Canada as of 2018.

Lukiwiski said he believes the community pastures are not going to be eliminated entirely just because the feds have drawn back their involvement with them. He said that hopefully someone or something else steps in to keep them going, but it was a necessary decision in order to keep up with the government’s priorities.

To read more please see the July 16 print edition of The Davidson Leader.

The Affinity Credit Union and Co-op Association celebrated the International Year of the Cooperative last week by helping clean up the Town of Davidson.

The Riverbend Co-op raked, weeded and picked up garbage at the Davidson Campground, while staff at the Credit Union did their part by cleaning up the Centennial Legacy Trail, the Senior Citizen’s Centre, the Bob Crowley Memorial Gardens and Arnold Park.

Tyler Pisiak, branch manager of the Credit Union, who helped out by weeding at Arnold Park, said the cleanup is an initiative by the Davidson co-ops to help their community who support them by buying memberships. He said co-ops around the province are taking part in the first ever-International Year by choosing their own way to celebrate it and their area.

“The International (Year of the Co-op) is more in recognition of the cooperatives around the province,” said Pisiak. “I guess one of the principles behind the cooperatives is giving back to the community. Why we’re doing this is we’re trying to just bring attention to what we do and that we’re a little bit different in that regard in that we like to give back to the community.”

Marie Nadeau, financial supervisor of the Davidson Branch of Affinity Credit Union, said the main idea behind the cleanup was “if we work together, we can do better for our communities.” She said in recognition of this members of Affinity got together and with a little push in the right direction by Communities in Bloom and the Town of Davidson they decided to get to work sprucing up the various gardens and parks.

“When we talked to Communities in Bloom, they said they have a girl hired for the job to water and weed, but there is so many areas that she can’t really dig in and do the nitty-gritty,” said Nadeau. “They gave us a few spots that they thought would be a good place to go and then the town said maybe clean up the park.

“They thought that would be a good idea and we were all for it. It’s the weeding and stuff, so that’s what we decided to do.”

Donna Russell, marketing coordinator at the Credit Union, who took part in cleaning up the flower gardens at Centennial Legacy Trail, said she was happy to complete some “community service” in celebration of the International Year of the Co-op. She said there are cooperatives all over the world and doing things like this brings attention to the gratitude co-ops have for the people who support them.