Voting open: Clare Acadiens peewees semifinalists for Good Deeds Cup

The Clare Acadiens Peewee C hockey team is among the top 10 semifinalists for the Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup. From left, back row: team manager Rosette Comeau, Zachery Belanger, Christian Doucet, Jayden Belliveau, Stephen Murphy, Marcel Lowe, Colby Haight, LoLo Choat, Daniel Gilliatt and coach Gilles Saulnier. Front row: Isiah Rhyno, Jakob Goulden, Noah Saulnier, Isiah Manzer, Damien Mullin and Orion Comeau. - Courtesy of Facebook

CLARE – The Clare Acadiens peewee C hockey team are among the top 10 semifinalists for the Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup.

The semifinalists for the national competition were announced during the NHL All-Star game on Jan. 26.

400 good deeds = 400 goals reads the Clare Acadiens’ poster chronicling their progress in the Good Deeds Cup Challenge.

“They’re excited, we’re excited,” Andrea Burke-Saulnier, the Good Deeds project parent lead for the team, said in an interview. Burke-Saulnier, along with her husband Gilles, who is the team’s coach, had known for several weeks the team had made the top 10 but couldn’t say anything.

“We knew for a couple of weeks so to be able to see the kids’ reaction was a lot of fun,” she said.

To reveal the news, they held an all-star game viewing party complete with pizza in one of the classrooms at Université Sainte-Anne to celebrate and recognize all the hard work the players have done. The team set a goal to do 400 good deeds, both as a team and as individuals. At last count on the morning of Jan. 28 they were at around 361 good deeds.

Each Good Deeds semifinalist team won $2,000 for the charity of their choice, as well as a prize package for the players.

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The competition gets narrowed down to three finalists by people visiting https://www.chevrolet.ca/hockey/good-deeds-cup.html between Jan. 26 to Feb. 9 and voting for their favourite team’s YouTube video.

The three teams with the most views over the two-week period will become Good Deeds Cup finalists and will each take home $5,000 for the charity of their choice.

The champion team receives a total of $100,000 for the charity of their choice, a winner’s ceremony in their home town and a feature on broadcast television. If the Acadiens win, they plan to donate the $100,000 to Feed Nova Scotia.

Burke-Saulnier said the team is now focusing on making it to the top three finalists.

“We’re not looking at the big prize. We’re aiming for the top three. That’s the big goal now.”

The players haven’t wasted any time getting their friends and families to share the news and watch the video. The parents are also reaching out, via social media, to families and friends, who are doing the same, creating a kind of international support, said Burke-Saulnier.

“Because we are such a small community, we really need to reach out to everybody,” she said, adding the support they’re getting is “awesome.”

The Shelburne County PetValu Peewee A Flames also took up the Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup challenge. The team did not make the Top 10, but still did lots of good deeds in the community.