By Darren Lum
Published Dec. 4 2018
Our little community is a lot like the Highland Storm Walkers Home Hardware Peewee hockey team. Small but with a great heart for helping out.
Both could be profiled on Hockey Night in Canada and earn $100000 for a chosen local charity for this year’s third annual Good Deeds Cup sponsored by Chevrolet.
Open to peewee hockey teams across the country the contest encourages hockey teams to give back to their respective communities with charitable efforts.
The examples of good deeds offered on the contest website (www.chevrolet.ca/hockey/good-deeds-cup.html) are volunteer at an animal shelter spend time as a team at a retirement home raise money for charity collecting bottles and cans volunteer with sick kids at a hospital or shovel neighborhood driveways.
Teams will document their good deeds with a video which will be posted to YouTube and then judged for the contest.
The Home Hardware Peewees have put their best foot forward by helping food banks with a collection of non-perishables and money while walking in the Santa Claus Parades in Minden and Haliburton.
This was videotaped and will be part of the one minute submission for the contest.
They collected $90 in Minden for their food bank. In Haliburton they collected $75 for Haliburton’s food bank which will be matched by the local Lions Club and Rotary Club of Haliburton.
The team’s non-perishable collection would have filled the back of a one-ton pickup said their coach James Raposo. It was donated to the Haliburton Food Bank run by the 4Cs recently.
On Dec. 15 the team will be collecting more food for other food banks at Walkers Home Hardware to “Fill the Truck” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Raposo said entering this contest was about more than the prizes or winning. His motivation was getting his players to learn about being good citizens.
“How helping your community can actually help your hockey. Making you a better person and try and show the kids how to go [and live life]” he said.
Moments later when asked about the reward he said “I want them to always see helping your community is a good thing to do. It’s not about the reward at all. It’s showing the kids the proper thing to do.”
Registering with the contest also provided the team with a Good Deeds Cup bag playbook pucks stickers and bracelets.
Submissions must be posted between Nov. 1 and Jan. 2. They will be judged by Chevrolet and Hockey Canada representatives. By Jan. 26 there will be 10 semi-finalists announced. There were more than 100 teams who entered the contest last year.
The winning team will also have its name engraved on the Good Deeds Cup.
The community in the Highlands has demonstrated generosity and strength of character before and getting the children to follow in that tradition was important he said.
“We just wanted to keep it going” Raposo said.
Eleven-year-old player Wyatt Raposo was happy to help those less fortunate.
“We’re helping people out and just getting people food to eat that don’t have that much money” he said.
If the team wins he said it’s good to show the country how the Highlands is a good place.
There’s no doubt winning the $100000 would mean a lot to the community.
This initiative also showcases the connection between hockey and the Highlands and Canada Raposo said.
“It continues on with what Haliburton [County and Canada] is with hockey” he said. “We are hockey. You see it all over the place. It’s all over the news and the TV all the time. It’s more proof this is what we are.”
Team manager Lisa Reinwald adds winning would enable the team to return the support paid so generously by the business community.
“It’s our way to give back and say ‘thank you’” Reinwald said.