BROOKINGS While locals and visitors are enjoying some relaxation and taking in the wide selection of indoor and outdoor activities that are part of 2024 Frost Fest, about 150 athletes, plus their friends and families, are coming to town looking for some action on the rink at Larson Ice Center, at Siouxland Sled Hockey: Pucks on the Prairie Jamboree.
Were hosting a tournament, said Juli Duden, president of Siouxland Sled Hockey, which is home-based in Sioux Center, Iowa. We have 144 hockey players coming from throughout South Dakota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri.
The tournament takes to the Larson ice for two days: Saturday, 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and Sunday 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Sled hockey is one of the fastest growing parasports, Duden explained. It is very popular in winter paralympics.
Sled hockey is played exactly like your traditional standard hockey, she added. Instead of wearing skates, the athletes use sleds. And the athletes who play sled hockey have a disability that would keep them from playing standard hockey.
We pull a pretty good radius for our team (Lightning Sled Hockey), athletes from as far south as Omaha, as far north as Watertown, as far east as Spirit Lake (Iowa), as far west as Colome.
Lightning Sled Hockey is under the umbrella of Siouxland Adaptive Sports, whose website siouxlandadaptivesports.com explains some of the fundamentals of sled hockey: Its a sport perfect for people with physical disabilities and mobility disorders including spinal cord injuries and lower body impairments.
Sled hockey enables youth and adults to play hockey sitting down in an adaptive sled. Each sled has a specially designed seat attached to an aluminum frame with two hockey blades underneath. Instead of one stick, the players use two shorter sticks.
Sled hockey was invented in Sweden in the early 1960s. In 1964, sled hockey was added as an official Paralympics sport to the Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway.
Siouxland will have both youth and adult divisions coming to Brookings: Well have sled hockey players, the youngest is 3 years old, the oldest is 70, and theres everything in between, Duden said.
As a venue for anything ice, the Larson Ice Center draws a lot of praise from the president: Four years ago we hosted our very first sled hockey jamboree in Brookings. We had about 100 players come from six different states and we had six different teams. They were all very impressed with the Larson (Ice Center).
All of our athletes use wheelchairs or crutches. Accessibility is also an issue. Larson is the most accessible rink that weve been to. Its phenomenal. Theres so many little details about it that a typical person wouldnt even recognize, like the fact that the hallways are wider. Theres a raised viewing area where someone in a wheelchair could look over the glass and see a hockey game. A lot of rinks dont have that available.
Even though were based in Sioux Center, the reason why we hold our home jamboree (in Brookings) is because the Larson is a phenomenal facility. The city of Brookings and Brookings Rangers hockey have been phenomenal in helping make this possible.
Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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