{"id":1895,"date":"2013-05-07T15:28:21","date_gmt":"2013-05-07T19:28:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=1895"},"modified":"2013-05-21T14:50:15","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T18:50:15","slug":"aurora-natives-story-brought-to-life-by-coke-jordan-eberle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-natives-story-brought-to-life-by-coke-jordan-eberle\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora native\u2019s story brought to life by Coke, Jordan Eberle"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Scott Wheeler
\nSpecial to The Auroran<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, May 1, Coke Zero, in partnership with Bell Media\u2019s TSN, launched the first short film of the Moment Zero series.
\n

\"Left<\/a>

Left to right, coach Glen Bince (Matthew in the film), Kevin \u2018Wheels\u2019 Wheeler and
neighbour David Fong at Real Sports Bar for the Moment Zero launch.
Photo by Scott Wheeler.<\/p><\/div>
\nThe Moment Zero series is a new marketing campaign created by Coke Zero that aims to bring real Canadian sports stories to life on the big screen.
\nAfter searching social media and sifting through thousands of submissions, Coke, much to the surprise of Aurora resident Kevin Wheeler, chose his story.<\/p>\n

In re-enacting the story, Coke brought on Edmonton Oilers right winger Jordan Eberle to star as Kevin \u2018Wheels\u2019 Wheeler, as well as TSN broadcasters Jay Onrait and Dan O\u2019Toole, who took on the roles of two police officers in the film. \u2018Wheels\u2019, a nickname Kevin received playing minor hockey in Aurora, became a focal point of the marketing campaign.<\/p>\n

The short, three minute film, which can be found online or in movie theatres across the country, tells the story of a decisive moment of action that leads to greatness. <\/p>\n

In Wheeler\u2019s story, Kevin forgets his equipment on his way to a hockey tournament in St. Catharines, playing, at the time, AE hockey for Aurora in 2002. <\/p>\n

In a panic, Kevin then makes a call to his Aurora neighbour, David Fong, who grabs his equipment and proceeds to meet Kevin, and mother Laurie Wheeler midway to exchange the gear.<\/p>\n

Already late, Laurie, in her rush to get Kevin back to the game takes Hwy 407 and gets pulled over. After being allowed to continue, Kevin arrives mid-way through the game, going on to score the winning goal.<\/p>\n

Kevin, who had no expectations when he submitted the story on Coke Zero\u2019s Facebook page, remains blown away, well after his trip to Edmonton for the filming or his interviews with various major media outlets.<\/p>\n

Through the use of 15 second commercials on TSN advertising Kevin\u2019s Twitter handle (@kevinwheels15), short videos done by TSN broadcaster Cabral \u2018Cabbie\u2019 Richards, coupled with other social media marketing, people across Canada began asking \u2018Who is Kevin \u2018Wheels\u2019 Wheeler?\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been an extremely surreal experience,\u201d Kevin says, going on to explain that there was a tremendous amount of pressure throughout the process.
\n\u201cMeeting Eberle for the first time was a really cool experience,\u201d he says, \u201cI was super nervous, because the social media aspect of the campaign revolved around me and him being best buds.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Fong, whose character plays a comical and heroic role in the film, was at the campaign launch at Real Sports Bar in Toronto to view the film.
\n\u201cI enjoyed it very much,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was good because there was an element of humour to it and there was the urgency of the situation with the pressure to get the equipment and get to the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

David downplays his neighbourly story of that day, years ago, in saying, \u201cI knew I had a key to the house, so getting in was no problem. I was just hoping that everything was in the bag and if something wasn\u2019t, I was wondering where I could go find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Kevin though, he argues his story is no different than many others that have likely been created in a hockey community like Aurora. <\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in Aurora supports each other,\u201d he says. \u201cI look forward to being able to give back that same experience that I got from the AMHA and all my coaches playing rep and house league hockey when I have kids of my own.\u201d <\/p>\n

The film can be found online at youtube.com\/momentzero. <\/em><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Scott Wheeler Special to The Auroran On Wednesday, May 1, Coke Zero, in partnership with Bell Media\u2019s TSN, launched the first short film of the Moment Zero series. The Moment Zero series is a new marketing campaign created by Coke Zero that aims to bring real Canadian sports stories to life on the big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-uz","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-09 18:23:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1895\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}