Crossfield rallying to end Alberta's Hockeyville title drought

Brendan Coulter · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 05, 2025 11:31 AM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

As voting wraps up on Saturday to crown the adjacent Kraft Hockeyville, Crossfield is bidding to assertion Alberta's archetypal expansive prize successful much than a decade. 

The town, which is astir 50 km northbound of Calgary, is 1 of 4 finalists near successful the yearly competition, alongside Honeywood, Ontario, Saint-Boniface, Quebec, and Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia.

Online voting started Friday morning. Whichever assemblage has the highest tally by 3 p.m. MT connected Saturday volition assertion $250,000 for arena upgrades and the accidental to big an NHL pre-season game.

"Right now, the assemblage is buzzing," said Jennifer Watson, president of the Crossfield Skating Club and an organizer of the Hockeyville bid.

"People are walking astir with their Hockeyville T-shirts on. The schoolhouse has the kids wearing Hockeyville T-shirts oregon wearing hockey jerseys ... It's beauteous cool."

The assemblage has temporarily changed the sanction of its Railway Street to Kraftville Street for the competition, said Crossfield Minor Hockey Association President Matt Chomistek.

"It's truly hard to thrust anyplace successful Crossfield and not spot immoderate motion of our campaign," Chomistek said. "It's been truly inspiring to spot an full municipality and our neighbouring towns get down this."

Sylvan Lake is Alberta's lone Kraft Hockeyville champion to date, capturing the rubric backmost successful 2014 erstwhile the expansive prize for arena upgrades was $100,000.

If the crown returns to Alberta this year, the prize wealth volition spell toward fixing up Crossfield's lone indoor rink, the Pete Knight Memorial Arena. 

The arena is utilized for hockey, fig skating, lacrosse, precocious schoolhouse graduation and different assemblage events.

"The Pete Knight Arena is genuinely the hub of the community. Being specified a tiny town, we don't person a batch of ample places wherever radical tin get together," said Chomistek.

"Many of us, particularly if you person aggregate kids successful hockey, we extremity up determination six days a week and emotion each infinitesimal of it. That's benignant of wherever we get to spot our kids turn up and make arsenic people."

The assemblage plans to usage the prize wealth to marque the rink much accessible for wheelchair users, by adding automatic doors and a harmless seating area.

"There's been skaters whose household members are successful wheelchairs that haven't been capable to travel to the arena to ticker their grandchildren skate oregon entree the stands," said Watson. "Even for able-bodied people, they're precise hard to measurement up into and not harmless for kids."

Mayor feeling confident

Even though a Western Canadian assemblage has not won the contention since Lumby, B.C. in 2016, Crossfield Mayor Kim Harris is assured her assemblage tin drum up the indispensable votes. 

Harris has had immoderate high-profile assistance from Canadian hockey icon Hayley Wickenheiser, and Hockey Hall of Famer Lanny McDonald, some of whom posted videos to societal media urging enactment for Crossfield.

The assemblage gathered astatine the arena for a rally connected Friday nighttime to promote voting. Another rally is happening Saturday from 1 p.m., arsenic radical hold for the last results.

"Watching our residents rally down 1 thing, and that 1 communal extremity is incredible," said Harris.

"This truly shows however overmuch our residents emotion our town, and that they volition bash astir thing to marque definite our municipality gets what we need.

"It astir brings maine to tears each time lately knowing that everybody is rooting for us."

The 3 communities that autumn abbreviated of the expansive prize volition person $25,000 for arena upgrades. All 4 volition get $10,000 worthy of kids hockey equipment, according to the NHL.

The expansive prize victor volition beryllium announced unrecorded connected Hockey Night successful Canada connected Saturday.