Andrew Anderson, Shane Topf and Jeremy Johnson each scored Saturday night, helping the Wisconsin Wilderness stave off elimination from the SIJHL playoffs.
The Wilderness, the top squad during the regular season, trail the best-of-seven series three games to two, following the 3-1 win over the Fort Frances Lakers.
Connor Hady had the lone goal for the Lakers. Game 6 is scheduled for Monday night in Fort Frances.
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The Border Cats won a defensive battle on home turf 1-0 against rival Duluth Huskies Monday. The single run came in the bottom of the ninth inning at Port Arthur Stadium in front of a Holliday crown of more than 650 people. Short-stop Brett Kay led off the ninth with a single and was able to take second base on a wild pitch. Kay then advanced to third on a ground out by Casey Selsor. Kay finally turned his single into a scored run from a sacrifice fly by Kyle Mossbarger. The win leaves the Cats with an 11-13 second-half record. They now trail Duluth four games to two in the Border Battle Series for the Superior Cup. Border Cats pitcher Mitch VandenBerge picked up the win in relief during his debut with the team. Meanwhile Joseph Koon had a solid start for the Cats, giving the team 8.1 shutout innings with six hits, not walks and 10 strikeouts. The Cats and Huskies resume their series at Port Arthur Stadium Tuesday evening. The first pitch is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. View full post on Tbnewswatch.com – Sports
The Thunder Bay Chill regained their confidence and heated up a hometown crowd handing the Des Moines Menace a 2-0 loss Friday night for its home-opener at Chapples Soccer Park .
The Chill outshot and outplayed their Heartland division rivals, dominating the first half and scoring two unanswered goals, including a penalty kick in extra time to freeze Des Moines chances and improving their record to 2-1.
Chill forward Brandon Swartzendruber, who scored both goals Friday, said it was the first time this season the Chill played an all-around effort. It felt good to get a win after the loss to WSA Winnipeg last weekend.
“It was definitely nice to get this win under our belts and kind of get the monkey off our back and just get our confidence back and know that we’re a team that can compete,” Swartzendruber said.
Swartzendruber opened the scoring after 30 minutes into the first half finding an empty net with a sliding pass from Nolan Intermoia.
The Chill kept the pressure on Des Moines with several huge chances that were just wide or stopped by Menace goal keeper Phil Boerger.
“We were just all over them,” said Swartzendruber. “We just have to keep that intensity up and keep winning the 50-50 balls and eventually they’ll fall in the net.”
Chill coach Tony Colistro coach said he wanted the team to come out strong at the beginning of the game and get the win. He said as long as the team keeps the pressure on, the goals will come.
“That happens all the time, as long as you can create a lot of opportunities, whether it’s one or two (goals), as long as you get the three points that’s what’s important,” Colistro said.
The second goal came in extra time in the first half when the Chill were awarded a penalty kick. Swartzendruber put the ball straight up the middle as Broeger dove right, bringing the crowd to its feet.
Although the second half was scoreless, it wasn’t without its chances for both teams.
Des Moines’ best chance came at 68 minutes when Bryan Perez tried to re-direct a pass into the net but Chill keeper Steve Paterson kept the ball out and his shut-out alive.
The Chill play Des Moines again Saturday at Chapples Soccer Park. Game time is 7:30 p.m.
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Nicole McKay just wants a place she and her family can call home.
Thanks to Habitat for Humanity’s active search to include an Aboriginal family in its Thunder Bay program, the McKay family’s wish has come true.
“I feel overwhelmed,” said McKay, who bought the Banning Street home, which was first built by Habitat in 2001 and occupied by another family since 2002. “I’m very appreciative that we were able to get into this program, because it is an opportunity for our family. For my family to have our own home is going to mean a lot to us. This is an opportunity for us not to have to keep moving from place to place. This is ours.
“We don’t have to feel like it’s somebody else’s. They can play as loud as they want and they’re settled. That’s something that’s really important to our family.”
There’s also plenty of space, something the family of five wasn’t afforded at their most recent residence.
McKay, husband Wesley and children Hailey, Jessie and Nicole, love each other very much, but it’s nice to have some privacy too, 10-year-old Hailey said.
“It makes me really happy. I won’t be too close to my little brother and sister,” the youngster said.
All it took was half an hour dedicated to filling out the proper forms, McKay said.
Habitat for Humanity CEO Diane Mitchell, who said there are about 10 families applying to buy every home the charity builds, said they’ve spent the past 18 months searching for an Aboriginal family to join the local program.
It hasn’t been easy, she said.
“I think that it seemed overwhelming to own a home. They didn’t know that it was really possible. The paperwork seemed a bit overwhelming. It was about communicating what the Habitat for Humanity program was all about, making sure that we communicated what we needed from families and allowed them access and met them on their terms in their organizations to help them fill out the applications and be approved,” Mitchell said.
The organization builds home and arranges interest-free mortgages for qualified families.
Mitchell said it costs Habitat about $75,000 to build each home. In 2010 they built two new homes and renovated the Banning Street address.
“Raising those funds is the utmost importance to us right now; also securing land so we can build the homes. We have the families, we have the volunteers. What we need is money and land to build houses to meet the needs.”
This particular home represents everything Habitat stands for, she added. The original family’s children grew up and moved out on their own, leaving the mother with too much space. She sold the home back to Habitat, keeping any equity, allowing the charity to house its 22 nd family.
McKay said being accepted into the program was a life-changing event for her family.
“We did the best we could. We did have a large backyard (at our last home), but the size of this house wants to make us stay home and want to spend time together in our home,” she said.
Well, as long as little brothers and sisters don’t get too close.
View full post on Tbnewswatch.com – News
Anthony LeBlanc and Keith McCullough are coming home – they hope.
The Thunder Bay duo, principals in Ice Edge Holdings Inc., announced Monday they’ve officially entered into talks with the ECHL in an effort to bring a professional hockey team to their hometown. The plan, first reported on tbnewswatch.com on July 8, remains contingent on the city and/or a private developer constructing a new multipurpose facility to replace the aging Fort William Gardens.
“It is the most important aspect of any future plans we may have, be it the ECHL or any other league that we’ve investigated, it is an absolute requirement that a new facility is in place,” said LeBlanc, who spent the day showing ECHL president Brian McKenna around Thunder Bay, including a tour of the Gardens and a meeting with city manager Tim Commisso.
LeBlanc said a team could exist at Fort William Gardens for a maximum of one season – though the city already has a lease agreement that makes the Lakehead Thunderwolves the arena’s primary tenant. It’s also home to the Superior International Junior Hockey League’s Fort William North Stars.
The news comes on a day that saw the group announced it had found a private investor to purchase the NHL’s struggling Phoenix Coyotes, months after Ice Edge became the leading contender to secure the bankrupt squad.
The move, if agreeable to the NHL’s board of directors, would make Ice Edge a minority owner of the franchise and advisors to the unnamed investor, who McCullough said plans to keep the team in Glendale, Ariz., a sticking point in the ongoing saga to find new owners for the team.
LeBlanc said he plans to be involved in the arena discussion to help expedite the process, but reiterated Ice Edge likely won’t be a primary investor in a new facility in Thunder Bay. Instead, if a new centre is built, LeBlanc said they are more than willing to provide an anchor tenant in the form of an ECHL franchise, which would guarantee more dates than the Thunderwolves, which hosts about 20 regular and non-conference games a season, plus playoffs.
McCullough said there’s every indication that Thunder Bay could work for an ECHL club, two rungs down from the NHL on the professional hockey ladder.
Assuming they could get an affiliation agreement with an NHL team – and the league has such agreements with 25 of 30 clubs – about 40 per cent of salary costs would be covered under the deal. That would leave the rest of the salary base, travel and other subsidiary costs for the ownership group to pay.
To make that work, they’d need between 4,200 and 4,500 fans per game on average, a number that doesn’t faze the former Yale University forward in the least. Professional hockey has tried and failed in the past in Thunder Bay, a fact McCullough is well aware of, naming both the Thunder Bay Senators and the Thunder Bay Thunder Hawks of the old Colonial Hockey League, which couldn’t make the economics work to stay afloat. McCullough said conditions are different in today’s financial world.
“There’s always been the Canadian dollar that’s taken any team that’s played in this building for a ride,” McCullough said after a short news conference in the Fort William Gardens lobby. “We’re much more comfortable with the currency situation versus where it has been.”
“But ultimately it’s about this arena. If you have a modern-day facility, as opposed to the one we’re standing in today, it puts the team in a much better position, both from a branding perspective and from a long-term sustainability perspective, I suppose, in terms of proving its mettle. “We think Thunder Bay has every opportunity to prove itself as a great fan base to support a team for a long period of time.”
The city has already begun setting aside money for a new multipurpose facility, taking an added $15.6 million for a variety of projects, the most notable being a proposed $60-milliion arena complex.
They also plan to petition the provincial and federal levels of government to kick in a portion of the cost.
McKenna, who was not at Monday’s news conference, told tbnewswatch.com on July 8 that the league was definitely interested in hearing what Ice Edge’s partners had to say.
“From the ECHL’s point of view we certainly are willing to explore it further,” he said last month.
He added the usual minimum requirement for an expansion team is a 6,000-seat facility. And according to the Naples (Fla.) News , a Chicago-area expansion team slated to start play at a 9,400-seat facility in Hoffman, Ill. in 2011-12 has been asked to secure US$250,000 in promotions and sponsorships and at least 1,000 season ticket holders before their first game is played.
Thunderwolves president Rory Cava said Monday that he’d like the opportunity to argue in favour of the university team taking over the prime occupancy of a new arena, should it get built, and that the school could likely fill the required number of dates a city-commissioned arena study said would be necessary to make the venture work.
“I can only speak for the Thunderwolves hockey team, but I think the university has also said there are other events – convocation possibly, other varsity sports – that they would put in there,” Cava said.
City council expects to be presented with another multipurpose centre study in September.
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A basket of strawberries shipped from Chile has an enormous environmental footprint, not to mention the chemicals used to keep it fresh. By buying the same basket of strawberries from a local farmer, consumers are getting a healthier, fresher product that has less of an environmental impact and is good for the regional economy. It only makes sense, says the Thunder Bay District Health Unit’s Catherine Schwartz-Mendez, who on Friday helped launch Get Fresh Thunder Bay, a comprehensive guide to local food. “The Get Fresh campaign promotes locally produced food. The benefits are wide and varied for our community,” Schwartz-Mendez said. “It’s fresh, nutritious and loaded with flavour. It’s also important for our environment because of less packaging and it doesn’t travel far.” The 32-page guide, which features a smiling strawberry on its cover, is essentially a directory listing local farms and businesses that make a point to use locally produced food like meat, produce and eggs, to stock their shelves or flavour their menus. The movement is growing, said Schwartz-Mendez, whose organization has doubled the number of guides in production and caught the attention of more and more businesses. “This year there are 12 new restaurants and caterers who are making a real effort to source local food,” she said, noting the campaign will officially launch on Saturday at the Thunder Bay Farmer’s Market. In addition to the guide, organizers have also set up a cyberspace marketplace that will allow consumers to shop locally online. Jodi Belluz, who operates Belluz Farm with her husband, said the idea for a web-based store arose from conversations with local farmers who were looking for ways to get more local food into the hands of more local people. “We found one of the problems was how to access it,” Belluz said. “Different farmers have different hours. We decided to look into models of online marketplaces.” What they came up with is the Superior Seasons Food Market that for a fee allows people and businesses to place orders. “It’s a real opportunity for farmers to expand their production,” Belluz said. “It’s an opportunity for farmers to know how much to produce, how much to harvest.” “It’s opened us up to new customers,” said Marianne Stewart of Blue Moon Ranch. It’s timely too, Belluz added. “It’s been an early, early season this year, so I think people are going to see lots of local food.”
View full post on Tbnewswatch.com – Arts & Life
A convincing second-half performance allowed the Thunder Bay Chill to walk away with a 4-1 win over the Springfield Demize Friday night. While the home team took the second game of a two-game series against the visiting Demize, it was nowhere near the convincing victory the Chill had Thursday night. The Springfield squad looked like a different team on the soaking wet pitch at Chapples Park. The Chill owned the ball for almost the entire game Thursday, but were forced to fight for possession and many times struggled to keep it Friday. Thunder Bay cracked the scoreboard first in the 15th minute when Brandon Swartzendruber tapped the ball into the back of Springfield’s net, but Springfield came right back and headed in a goal of their own to tie the in the 19th minute. Teams traded chances and Springfield’s offence at times had the Chill on their heels. The half ended with the draw still in tact. But a stronger and more confident Chill team entered the second half. “As a coach that is what you want to see,” said Chill head coach Tony Colistro. “You want to go in, make some corrections and then see the players produce in the second half. It was nice to see that the players came out and adjusted to take the game away.” The Chill’s offence started to take the game away from the Demize early in the second half. Miguel Abascal ripped a shot into the top corner of Sprinfield’s net to start the scoring in the 49th minute. William Zardetto brought the score to its final 4-1 in the 81st minute, giving the defenceman his first goal as a Chill. “It felt kind of lucky that I was there,” Zardetto said about getting to a loose ball in front of the Demize keeper. “It’s a great feeling. Every time you score for your team it’s an indescribable feeling; it is very good.” The competition gets stiffer next week as the Chill take on the Des Moines Menace. The first game of the two-game series takes place on Friday, June 18 at Chapples Park, with a second game scheduled for Saturday, June 19 at the same venue. Both games are expected to start at 7:30 p.m.
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by ThunderBayClassifieds.ca on November 19, 2010 - 1 Comments
Loch Lomond Ski Hill and its owner are facing charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in connection with a tragic accident at the facility last...
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The fate of a proposed wind turbine farm on the Nor’Wester Mountain Range is almost in the province’s hands. After spending four hours in camera discussing...
by ThunderBayClassifieds.ca on October 13, 2010 - 1 Comments
The Lakehead Thunderwolves lost a pair of early games to Waterloo last season and it cost them top spot in the OUA West. It very may well cost them again. Pen...
by ThunderBayClassifieds.ca on November 17, 2010 - 1 Comments
A haircutting incident at a local school has landed the police and public school board in front of the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. Members of the...
by ThunderBayClassifieds.ca on November 13, 2010 - 1 Comments
Four people were injured following a two-vehicle highway crash Saturday. Depsite wet snow and rain, OPP Sgt. Ted Becker said that weather played no role in th...
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