The recreation department of the Town of Hay River has an extra $4,000 to spend as a result of a recent contest by the Mackenzie Recreation Association (MRA).
The town received the windfall because so many community residents participated in the Show Us Your Skills Physical Literacy Bingo Challenge.
Hay River had the most participants in the South Slave.
"It's always good to get some additional money for rec programming and rec facilities," said Stephane Millette, the recreation director with the Town of Hay River, who expressed thanks to the MRA for the financial support.
"We'll make sure we put the money to good use," he said.
Enterprise also won $4,000 for having the most participants per capita in the entire area covered by the association.
Fort Simpson also won $4,000 for having the most participants in the Deh Cho region.
The contest ran from Feb. 2 to March 1.
Jessica Van Overbeek, executive director of the MRA, said that 119 people participated in the communities covered by the association.
The Show Us Your Skills Physical Literacy Bingo Challenge involved people performing fundamental skills — things like cartwheels, hopping, cycling and much more — and submitting photos to prove it.
"And each square on the bingo sheet is a fundamental movement skill," said Van Overbeek.
The MRA kept track of the skills performed and placed participants into the appropriate categories for individual prizes.
Van Overbeek said the goal was to provide education and information on the different fundamental moving skills for both older and younger people.
"Every day we featured one of the skills and made some suggestions on how people might want to do them and a little bit more information about that particular skill," she said.
Dale Loutit, the president of the MRA, said the challenge was a new event this year, and was presented with Covid-19 relief sport funding from the Department of Municipal and Community Affairs.
"We've been kind of playing with the idea for a little bit of a while, and we thought this is the perfect time with everybody at home," said Loutit, adding the challenge will probably be continued next year because of the good reception.