By: Matt Weingarden, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Lakeshore News Reporter
To quote Willy Wonka, “So shines a good deed… in a weary world.” No truer words spoken, especially given the current state of affairs across the globe.
That being said, a group of young Lakeshore hockey players are helping to make a small difference…spreading good deeds across the region for charity.
The Lakeshore Lakeshore Lightning Girls U11 White team has taken up the Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup challenge. The contest, which is in its 9th season, is eligible to minor hockey teams to take the values they learn on the ice – determination, leadership, teamwork – and use them to support their communities, off the ice through doing as many goods deeds as they can and posting them to social media before a March 6th deadline.
As ‘Good Deeds’ are submitted, a live leaderboard showcases top-ranking teams, while a milestone tracker will track the total number of Good Deeds completed nationwide. The team with the most Good Deeds will be crowned the new Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup champions. An added assist this year: the first 50 teams to register for the Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup and submit a Good Deed will receive a $250 pizza party to kick off their efforts.
As of press time, the girls are sitting in first place. Very impressive. The team with the most good deeds posted on Social Media (Facebook and / or Instagram) will win $100,000 for the charity of their choice. And their choice is the Cancer Research Collaborative Fund/ Play For A Cure.
Last year’s champions, the Huntsville Sting U13-Black team, completed an impressive 1,358 Good Deeds and donated their $100,000 grand prize to Food4Kids Muskoka.
Team organizer Chantelle Meadows said the deeds must be posted and follow the competition guidelines or be submitted to the team’s Instagram.
“So, my daughter Lauren is a huge Sarah Nurse fan, who was promoting the Chevrolet Good Deeds Cup. With the help of her hockey teammates, they made the decision to take on the challenge,” said Meadows.
Nurse is a Canadian professional ice hockey player for the Toronto Sceptres of the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) and Canada women’s national ice hockey team.
As the team prepared for a Sunday morning game, the Lakeshore News sat down with several of the players to get their perspective on why its important to do good deeds across the community.
“Kindness is contagious, if one person does a good deed, then everyone else will try to do some too,” said Tessa Thomson.
“Because the world needs more kindness, and there’s so much hate in the world and you need more kindness to feel good about yourself and happy,” Lauren Meadows explained.
“It is important to make sure we can help out our community as much as we can,” added Madison Villemaire.
At this point, the team has performed hundreds of good deeds, documented on social media and include:
Donating to the local food bank, helping provide gloves and hats to the Welcome Centre for women and families, toothbrushes to the homeless, snow shoveling and good deeds at local schools to name a few.
“We have over 600 good deeds posted at this point…in fact we even broke the internet because we have posted so many good deeds,” laughed Meadows. “Instagram actually put us in jail.”
And, that’s a good problem to have.
“The girls have really stepped up…its almost become contagious to them,” added Meadows. “Its wonderful to see the growth in the girls – challenging each other and striving to be number one in the province.”
Here is how you can help support the team.
Record your video, post it publicly on Instagram using #GoodDeedsCup and #contest, be sure to tag @ChevroletCanada and @LakeshoreDoGoodGirls. Or, DM or email to gooddeedscup@gmail.com and they will post for you up until March 6th.
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