While she’s thrilled with the early response, Cathy Martins said she still needs plenty of help from Osoyoos and area residents in her bid to have the town named Kraft Hockeyville.

A week after submitting the official entry letter and photos to the Hockeyville website to enter Osoyoos into the wildly-popular national contest, sponsored by Kraft and CBC, Martins is very happy Osoyoos, as of Tuesday morning, was in third place in the Pacific region for B.C.

“We’re off to a great start, but we need tons more of support if we’re going to achieve our goal,” said Martins, an avid hockey fan and longtime supporter of Jr. B hockey  in Osoyoos for most of the past 20 years.

Next Monday evening, Martins is urging all community members who are supporting her Hockeyville campaign to show up at the Sun Bowl Arena for a “community spirit picture”, where photos will be taken and a video shot to submit to the contest.

“I want people to show up for a group picture showing off our community spirit, so we want them to wear hockey jerseys or hockey gear or their Coyotes jerseys,”  she said. “We will have minor hockey teams there and members of the Osoyoos Coyotes will be there. I have a young guy lined up to shoot a video for the whole event and we’ll submit that to the contest.”

Martins is also lining up numerous members of town council to participate.

Everyone is urged to show up Monday between 7 and 7:30 p.m.

While dozens of people have pressed “like” on the town’s Facebook site designed for the Hockeyville contest, that doesn’t count as an official entry into the contest, said Martins.

“You have to officially sign into the Kraft Hockeyville website and send a submission,” she said. “The local response has been very good for only being registered for one week and we’re in third place, but we need a lot more people to sign up.”

Martins, a local supply teacher, has continued to lead the way as she sent in another detailed letter about her love of hockey on Monday, as well as another half dozen photos, bringing the total number of photos she’s submitted to the contest to almost 50.

“I’m quite fine with leading the way, but I’m asking everyone in the community to get involved,” she said. “People have until Jan. 31 to send in letters and pictures and then it will be announced which communities will be in the finals to be Hockeyville.

“Once we reach that stage, then we’ll really get things going because then we need the entire community behind this.”

Osoyoos was in second place for the first several days after she entered the contest, behind Campbell River, but fell to third place in the Pacific region following a surge by supporters in West Kelowna, Martins said.

“We’ve got one more week for people to get involved, so I’m really hoping they will,” she said.

All entries can be submitted to www.krafthockeyville.ca

The Osoyoos entry can be found under the Sun Bowl Arena.

The winning community in the Kraft Hockeyville contest receives a $100,000 upgrade to its local arena as well as the honour of hosting an NHL pre-season game.

For more information, contact Martins at 250-495-7274 or by email at [email protected]