Give local football volunteers a lot of credit: they always find quality guests to speak at their fundraisers.
The annual dinner to raise money for minor football and the high school Elecs took place Saturday at the Days Inn Plaza.
Although it's tough for anyone to top TSN anchor Jay Onrait, who was one of last year's guests, the three Saskatchewan Roughriders in attendance spoke well, told funny stories, signed autographs, posed for pictures and did anything else asked of them.
Head coach Corey Chamblin and receivers Weston Dressler and Geroy Simon were the guest speakers.
Dressler holds a special place in the hearts of Rider fans, and it's not often you get to meet one of the greatest receivers in CFL history in Simon.
It was also apparently the first time a Riders head coach has appeared in Estevan in quite some time.
I'm neither a Riders nor a Lions fan, but meeting and interviewing Simon was a thrill, and it's great that organizers were able to get him.
With Dressler, a popular topic in the question and answer session was how he felt about having Dwight Anderson as a teammate after the infamous eye-poking incident in 2011.
He said the worst part was that he'd undergone laser eye surgery that off-season, and the waiting period for his corneal flap to fully heal hadn't ended yet.
Fortunately, there was no permanent damage and Dressler would go on to record a career year in 2012.
Although the community has certainly turned out in force to support local football since the 2011 floods, they are not out of the woods yet and funds are still needed, particularly in the restoration of the Woodlawn Park facility, which the teams will return to this year.
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At this point, the TS&M Woodlawn Golf Club isn't expecting to be impacted by flooding this spring, and that's terrific news for all parties involved after the debacle of 2011.
However, that depends on the pace of the remaining melt, and the amount of rain the area gets over the next month or two.
Two years ago, the massive blizzard at the end of April and the enormous amount of rain after that were the tipping point. That was what put it over the top and made the situation as bad as it was.
Even if there is flooding, we're not talking about anywhere near the same kind of situation as we saw in 2011 - as Brian Dueck said, "apples and oranges" - but all the same, let's hope Woodlawn stays dry this season as they debut their redesigned back nine.
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Congratulations to the local players on the Zone 1 team that won the bantam Sask First tournament on the weekend in Regina.
It's a very stressful time of year for kids who are eligible for the WHL draft, especially for those who don't know if they'll be selected.
It adds that much more pressure to perform at the Sask First tournament, and while only a handful of the players on the roster were from this area, some of them were standouts, according to scouting reports from the tournament.
Contact Josh Lewis at 306-634-2654 or [email protected]. Why hasn't Dave Nonis been fired yet for not getting Luongo or Kiprusoff at the trade deadline? Reimer is terrible. Note the dripping sarcasm.
