Participating communities collectively engaged in over five-million minutes of outdoor physical activities in 10 days. (https://challenge.saskatchewaninmotion.ca/)

By Elliott Knopp

Go Out and Play

Meadow Lake wins $10,000 Go Out and Play Challenge

Mar 23, 2021 | 5:01 PM

After a long week of hard work and a lot of fun, Meadow Lake has emerged as the winner of Saskatchewan Blue Cross’ Go Out and Play Challenge.

The contest designed to encourage people to engage in outdoor physical activity included 38 communities from across the province, yet Meadow Lake—a city with a small population of nearly 5,000—racked up the most time with a little over 538,000 total minutes. Langenburg and Maple Creek came in second and third place with total times around 507,000 and 438,000 respectively.

Collectively, all of the participating communities tallied 5,033,786 minutes of outdoor physical activity over the 10-day period.

Parks and Recreation manager Regan Beck shared his excitement with the community’s achievement while acknowledging the collective effort from each participant.

“It is absolutely a joint effort. I’ve seen this before, but once Meadow Lake really gets behind something, they go all out,” Beck said. “We were going into this thing hoping we could get 300,000 [minutes]. I thought that might give us a chance to win, and then after the first four days, we were already closing in on it and we re-established our goal after the weekend. I’m really proud of the Parks and Recreation department and the work that the crew did. Obviously, this is nothing we could’ve done on our own.

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He added the fitness centres and schools played a significant role in winning the challenge through their promotional and competitive efforts.

“The schools have been massive with all of the different promotion they have done, as well as the fitness centres in the community. We had families supplying prizes and challenging other families without us asking or approaching them. We had all of these things going around, and everyone just jumped on board. It’s really amazing to see, and the numbers we put up were just astronomical. I think we really raised the bar.”

With the challenge completed and Meadow Lake being crowned this year’s winners, Beck reflected on the final days of the challenge, recalling the last minute worries of wondering if the community had done enough to pad their lead and seal the win.

During the final two days of the event, the leaderboard that displayed each communities’ minutes was removed from the website, leaving all of the participants with no indication of where they measured up to the other competitors.

“I knew we were doing really well, but I also know that Langenburg stayed with us the whole time, which was really impressive on their behalf. Over 10 days, you might be worried people are getting a little leery of the whole thing and getting tired of it. We knew we needed a big finish. We thought we did enough, but you’re never sure. It was a pretty amazing performance, we averaged 75,000 in the two days, which was our best individual days throughout the whole competition.”

While the cash prize is clearly the main focus of this achievement, Beck stated the lesser acknowledged victory is using the challenge as an opportunity to display the friendly, competitive spirit that Meadow Lake residents are proud of.

He added the community has faced its fair share of adversity over the last year, and this victory demonstrates how passionate the community is.

“We’re small, but we still have that community spirit. That gets people excited, and we are a very competitive community in a positive way. It was nice to see our community have the opportunity to showcase the real Meadow Lake. Unfortunately, we’ve had a lot of less than fantastic things to talk about for the last year or so, so to be able to showcase us in a positive light is a really great thing to see.”

The Parks and Recreation department is currently discussing an approach to how the cash prize will be used to increase the lighting in Lions Park.

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Elliott.Knopp@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @ElliottKnopp