The town of Altona has come up with a way to celebrate a local curling team's success on the world stage.

In February, Team Zacharias captured the gold medal at the Women's World Junior Curling Championships in Russia by defeating South Korea in the final.

A community celebration was being planned for MacKenzie Zacharias, her sister Emily, Karlee Burgess and Lauren Lenetine, but then COVID-19 changed everything and the event was cancelled.

Altona Mayor Al Friesen said town council still wanted to recognize the team's accomplishment in some meaningful way and came up with the idea of splashing their image on one of the town's highway billboards.

"Our most recent steps on that have been in consultation with Team Zacharias to determine how that billboard would look and then determine when and where that particular billboard would be utilized. Council has chosen the billboard just east of Rosenfeld that faces east on Highway 14."

According to Friesen, council felt that particular billboard location was a high profile spot to celebrate the team's world title. 

"We're finalizing the design and all of those things and at some particular point, that sign will go up. It's a recognition ... that Altona is proud to have a world champion based in our community."

Based on the preliminary design, the billboard will picture members of the team displaying their gold medals with the caption "Team Zacharias - 2020 World Junior Curling Champions" along with the "Celebrate Altona" logo.

The image will be displayed on a billboard that is 32 feet wide and 12 feet high sometime this fall.