sportsleader

Sioux Center returns to varsity play
Sioux Center is the only Iowa team
that is a member of the South
Dakota Amateur Hockey Association,
and the Storm girls squad is
doing its best to show it belongs.
The 2018-19 season is the second run at
varsity play for the Storm. The Sioux Center
Hockey Association’s squad thought it was
ready in the 2016-17 season. It was not.
“I played on the varsity,” said Sarah
Vander Werff, a 17-year-old who is a junior
at Western Christian High School. “I remember
we got squashed every game.”
Jeff Koops, who previously coached in
other capacities with the Sioux Center program
but is in his third year coaching the
Storm girls, said numbers quickly became
an issue that season.
“When we started we had enough girls
for two teams, a varsity and a JV,” Koops
said. “But then one girl got in a car accident,
another had an injury, a couple of them
quit. Then all of the sudden we were way
short-handed. We had already committed to
playing varsity that year, but we didn’t have
enough people.”
The results were as you might expect.
“It was kind of a train wreck,” Koops said.
“We didn’t have any wins. We only had a
couple of close games. Those games were
not a lot of fun.”
For the younger players on the team, it
was still beneficial according to Jenna King,
a 16-year-old sophomore at Sioux Center
High School.
“We’d all play in the junior varsity game
and then most of us would play again in the
varsity game 20 minutes later,” King said.
“You just can’t skate that much. But getting
that much ice time and playing against good
players made our players better.”
HIT THE RESET
The experience caused Sioux Center to
back down to junior varsity only in the SDA-
HA.
Last year, the Storm experienced success
like never before.
The SDAHA includes teams from Aberdeen,
Sioux Falls, Brookings, Mitchell,
Watertown, Huron, Oahe and Rushmore,
all South Dakota programs other than Sioux
Center.
“Iowa is a part of the Midwest Association,
but there are no teams anywhere close to
here,” Koops said. “The travel would just be
ridiculous and the teams we’d play are all
from much bigger towns. South Dakota is a
better fit. Obviously Sioux Falls is a big city,
but there are a lot of towns our size.”
The Storm won the girls junior varsity
championship last season.
“Last year was a lot of fun,” Vander Werff
said. “It put us in a good place. With the
number of girls we have, if we were going to
move up this was the year to do it.”
Koops said not all the players, who still
remembered the first run at varsity, were
sure moving up was a good idea. The coach,
however, had no doubts.
“We did so well last year I knew it was
time to move up,” Koops said. “I was confident
we’d be able to compete.”
King said the athletes “needed the challenge.”
“The group we have now has been together
for a long time,” she said. “Maybe not all
of us were sure, but we were ready.”
BUYING INTO THE PROGRAM
The Sioux Center program draws athletes
from all over the region. Since it’s not affiliated
with any school, it tends to draw
players who took an interest at an early age.
The Sioux Center Hockey Association sponsors
teams starting with under-6 mini-mites
12 THE SPORTS LEADER | JANUARY 2019