OXFORD – More than 100 people came to the Oxford Station House Community Center on Saturday for the second annual Oxford Hills Pizza Challenge.

Area pizza places offered the best of their pepperoni, cheese and loaded pizzas to sample; the event was a fundraiser for the community center.

“We were just thinking about doing different fundraisers, and so people could see the community center,” said Chairwoman Pam Lovely.

For about the past seven years, the Oxford Recreation Committee has been working on the large community center building on Route 121 that was once the fire station. The Recreation Department pushed to have the building used by the town when the fire department made its move to a new facility on Route 26, Lovely said.

Citizens obliged by giving the committee the go-ahead to move into the spacious building.

“We’ve been doing a bunch of fundraisers and purchased a lot of the things in here through fundraisers,” Lovely said. “We’d like to see a lot more activities. We’re looking for suggestions for what people would like to see here.”

So far, activities have included movies on Friday nights, storytellers and writers sharing their talents with families, cribbage games for seniors and Girl Scout events. A skating rink outside the building is used in winter, and horseshoe pits and bocce ball courts are being installed this year.

“We open this building up for whoever wants to use it,” Lovely said.

Along with the pizza-tasting on Saturday, there were games available to keep children occupied and Girl Scout Troop 1495 sold cookies.

About $190 was raised for the Oxford Recreation Department. People gave donations of at least $2 each before eating as much pizza as they wanted. They voted on their favorites in the three categories, and the pizza contestant with the most overall votes received a traveling plaque.

This year, the participants were Lake Store, Outpost, Polly’s, West Paris General Store, Bolsters Mills Store, Dad’s Place, the Store Keeper, Amato’s and Ari’s.

Dad’s Place of Norway received the most votes for cheese and pepperoni pizzas and the award for best overall. The Outpost of Otisfield got top billing in the loaded category.

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