After raising over $4,000 himself, participant Craig Wenzel was named “sole survivor” on Saturday evening, winning the third annual Survivor Lakeland competition and going home with the $5,000 grand prize.
“I came into this with very little expectation of anything other than raising money for this cause. I didn't know what to expect,” said Wenzel. “There were some people that came with that game-plan mentality and a lot that just came to have a good time. I was one of those ones. I had a blast.”
Wenzel was part of a group of 20 contestants who were “cast-away” to Little Leap Park in Bonnyville for the majority of the week. This year the group managed to raise over $41,000 for the Lakeland Centre for FASD in Cold Lake, which surpassed the committee's goal.
“Our goal was $40,000 and we passed it. Without the generosity of the community and the hard work of the castaways this wouldn't have happened,” said organizers Rob Bush. “It went really well. This year not so many people knew each other so there were more surprises. It was hard to figure out the alliances.”
Beginning Tuesday evening, committee members put the castaways, split into two teams of 10, through a variety of rigorous, skill-testing and brain-wracking challenges.
“We fly by the seat of our pants,” said Bush, referring to the challenges they present the castaways. “We never know what props we are going to have until the week of the event, so everything is by the seat of our pants. We love it. It's fun.”
The competition was a tough and grueling one, which saw the castaways sticking it out through all different types of weather. Although difficult, Wenzel said he enjoyed the different games presented to him over the course of the week.
“Rob had a beautiful way of throwing all kinds of things at us; monkey wrenches that threw us for loops. We didn't know what was going on,” said Wenzel. “The true and false were kind of hard because Rob had a good way of coming up with all kinds of weird tidbits of information, but I like doing all of these kinds of things.”
Wenzel said he plans on donating some of the $5,000 prize money back to the FASD centre, and will use another portion of it to treat the castaways and committee members to a nice dinner in the future.
“It couldn't have gone to a better guy,” said Bush. “Craig played the game well and he raised the funds; $4,000 himself.”
The inaugural Survivor Lakeland saw organizers raise $35,000 for the Bonnyville Boys and Girls Club. Last year the group outdid itself and collected over $55,000 for Lakeland Special Olympics. This year, again, they surpassed their goal.
“I'd like to thank all of the sponsors, the castaways and the committee. There are too many people to name. It takes a lot of people to put this on and it went great.”
Anyone interested in getting cast away next year's Survivor Lakeland can start signing up, with Bush saying the event will be back for a fourth straight year next summer.
