Devastated by the loss of her high school sweetheart, Rhonda didn't know what to say when asked if her two young sons, Jace and Linden, wanted to play hockey the following weekend on teams their father had helped coach. So she asked them. The boys wanted to play.
Jace, who is 10, was in his last year of Atom. He scored five goals in his game, then joined older brother Linden, now 13, for his pee-wee game, a special call-up arranged by Young, who had coached the team with help from Peter as an assistant. The rest of the team stayed off the ice for a couple minutes while the brothers took a couple warm-up laps on their own.
"All the mothers are crying," Rhonda said.
Those emotions spilled onto the bench when the Catt brothers took the opening faceoff side-by-side and finished their opening shift with Jace scoring on a cross-ice pass from Linden.
"We couldn't have written a better script," Young said. "Our entire bench was crying and hugging and high fiving."
Up in the stands, amid more tears and hugs, something bigger was happening.
"That right there gave me a kick in the butt to say 'you have to get it together because as much as you are mourning your husband, look at what your kids are out here doing,'" Rhonda said. "One of the coaches said it was like they had an angel on their shoulder because they played their games with so much respect for their dad. It was mind blowing. As an adult you are losing it every day and it's 'holy crap my kids are just … wow.'"
That moment became a rallying point for the rest of Lumby to win the Kraft Hockeyville bid.
"It gave us a different spirit, a bit of hope," said Angie Clowry, who is on the local organizing committee. "It made all of us aware we should grab onto this, take all our grief and put it into a good space."
Through social media and word of mouth, Clowry and her team got the townspeople and former Lumby residents involved. Whether it was relatives in Australia, friends traveling in Peru, local kids in preschool, families watching hockey on the couch or friends attending NHL games in other cities, they all posted photos of themselves in hockey jerseys and used the hashtag #VoteLumbyforKraftHockeyville2016 to raise awareness and collect votes. More than 300 people hit the Pat Duke Memorial Arena ice on the Family Day holiday, while another 150 packed the stands and concourse. Older residents who had never used a computer in their life stopped by makeshift offices established at the Lumby Visitors Information Center so Clowry could teach them how to get online and cast a vote for their community to win.
"It was a pretty powerful dynamic," Clowry said. "All born out of grief."