Pulled a plane to build a team – a Reflective Story

Do you think you could pull a plane?  I mean a REAL plane.  The answer is YES when we decide to do it together.

The Kelowna Community Resources team of twelve pulled a plane in 21.5 seconds at the  3^rd Annual Valley First Plane Pull Challenge, a fundraising event hosted by Kelowna Flightcraft for United Way on May 11, 2012.

The bulky team called Headband of Brothers from Kelowna Flightcraft ranked first with a record time of 9.29 seconds to pull the plane. By contrast, our team of twelve put on pirate hats, triumphantly swaggered onto the runway and pulled the plane in 21.5 seconds.

The enthusiastic KCR team ranked 27th among the 32 teams, which is an impressive improvement since the last year when we barely got the plane to move.

The KCR team has been participating in the Plane Pull for three years and each year has brought new progress and goofy fun for the team. “Last year our team spirit and enthusiasm was being built and this year we added uniforms — our pirate hats and garb. There was a real sense of unity. It’s a good way of building team spirit.”, said Elizabeth MacLeod, Settlement Services Manager.

Kelsey Chmilar, Database Developer for KCR, said she would definitely join the team again next year. “You go around and get to tell people I pulled the plane in 21 seconds. The plane is about 35000 tons. How many people can say that they have pulled a plane? It is really cool!”, said the first-time participant.