BLACKFOOT Last weekend at the Blackfoot Airport, a team from Calgary, Canada, won the Smoke-N-Wings Idaho State BBQ Competition.
Janice Smella and her squad, Smellaque, will earn spots in the Kansas City Invitational and the Jack Daniels World Competition. The Kansas City Barbecue Society has only approved the Smoke-N-Wings competition for the second year. Nonetheless, the Smellaque barbeque squad has been participating in tournaments across North America for the past eleven years.
We’ve had great success. “We’ve been extremely lucky,” Smella said. It was amusing because, while we were unaware of it, we had won the Canada 2024 Team of the Year trophy, and our trophy had been shipped to this competition.
In addition to taking first place at the Idaho State tournament, they were also given the 2024 Canada Team of the Year trophy by the event organizer, Steven McClellen.
Smellaque said they attend competitions like BBQ tournaments based on the camaraderie they find there, although they travel a lot to do so.
We choose contests based on who we like, whether we think the organizers are wonderful, or simply because it’s a fun event. In this instance, we came because the organizers are amazing. The McClellens, Steven and Stacey, are locals. They simply go above and beyond for everything. After the competition, they actually rushed around and handed everyone an ice cream sandwich, which is the best thing ever, Smella said. They also brought us breakfast this morning.
The McClellens and Smoke-N-Wings were able to generate around $9,000 for the Bingham County Mayor’s Scholarship fund through an auction held at the event, in addition to organizing a successful barbecue competition. A Winchester and 50-pound boxes of potatoes, as well as homemade cherry syrup, were among the many donated things up for sale.22LR and snowboards with a Corona and Coors theme.
After we were sanctioned last year, the charity auction got underway. “To kind of maximize what’s going on and give back to the communities, most barbecue competitions that they do usually involve some sort of fundraiser as well,” Steve McClellen previously told EastIdahoNews.com.
In addition, there was a raffle and live music by the band Two Bald Men. Many of the teams that traveled from out of state to compete offered barbecue for attendees to buy and sample.
